


Take Me Out of My Envelope

by rikyl



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Season 2, Shop Around the Corner AU, aka You've Got Mail AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2018-10-17 22:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10603239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikyl/pseuds/rikyl
Summary: Leslie and Ben fall for each other as online pen pals while fighting about budgets in real life.Originally posted to LJ. Sadly, still incomplete.





	1. Chapter 1

“Leslie, hi,” Ann said, opening her front door with a look of surprise.

It suddenly occurred to Leslie that she had shown up at Ann’s every single day this week. “Is it not a good time? I should go. I’ll go. Is it … when would be a good time?”

Ann smiled at her a little more warmly. “Leslie, it’s fine, come on in. It’s always a good time for you.”

Leslie felt absurdly grateful as she stepped into Ann’s living room again. “Thank you, Ann. You’re such a good friend. I guess this shutdown is leaving me with a lot of time on my hands, and I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“I know,” Ann said with sincere sympathy and gave her a little hug. “Um … it’s just, we’ve been hanging out so much, I’m falling behind, and I really need to get some things done tonight. Do you want to talk to me while I’m folding laundry? Sorry, I know that’s lame ….”

“Yeah, okay. Sure. I could do that.” Leslie noticed that Ann did indeed have several laundry baskets on her living room floor, and something that looked like a medical soap paused on the DVR, and felt a pang of guilt. She collapsed on the easy chair, as Ann went to work efficiently folding her whites. “I’m sorry I keep intruding. It’s just … what am I going to do all summer, Ann? I don’t get what people do with their time when they’re not working.”

“Um … I don’t know. Get a hobby? What do you like to do?”

“Work, Ann! Work is what I like to do. I like being at City Hall, and planning parks programs, and solving problems, and checking tasks off my lists. That’s what I do. And I can’t do it right now because BentheJerk—forget it. I don’t want to talk about him right now.”

“Okay. Um. But what are your other interests? What do you like to do in your free time?”

“What free time? I’ve been working 16-hour days since … since …” She couldn’t remember how long she’d been keeping up that schedule. Long enough that she was having trouble envisioning her days any other way.

“Wow. Leslie. Don’t take this the wrong way, but … have you thought about using this summer to focus on your personal life?”

“Personal life?” Leslie echoed.

“Yeah, you know. Having fun. Meeting people. Possibly dating? You have some time right now. Maybe you could meet someone. It’s been months since you broke it off with Justin.”

It had been, but …

“Whoa. Ann. I am not letting you set up me up again.” That MRI guy had been a disaster. More bad dates seemed like the last thing she needed this summer.

“I won’t set you up again, I promise. What about online dating? Have you ever considered that?”

“Ew, Ann. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned brushing hands in the produce aisle when you both reach for the same piece of fruit?”

Ann gave her a skeptical look. “Has that happened to you?”

“No. It could, though. Maybe I just need to buy more fruit.”

“Leslie, real life is not a romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan,” Ann said. “Lots of people meet on those sites. One of the nurses I work with met her husband online. And maybe you wouldn’t meet the love of your life, that’s not what I’m suggesting, but … you could have some low-pressure fun.”

Leslie sighed. “I don’t know, Ann.”

“Here, let me just pull up the website. Look at some profiles, see if it’s something that might be interesting to you. You never know.”

“Well … I guess it doesn’t hurt to look.” It’s not like she had anything else to do tonight, she thought, an image of Ben Wyatt popping into her head along with a flash of frustration. Maybe this would be a good distraction.

Ann pulled up the website and Leslie started flipping through the profiles. Too young. Too old. Too much body hair. One guy who was just looking for a hookup.

“What about that guy?” Ann said, looking over her shoulder. “He looks good.”

He was good looking, that was true—blonde hair, nice build, 38 and divorced, in search of a long-term relationship. But …

“He likes Nascar and wrestling.”

“Leslie, the people you date don’t have to share all your interests.”

“But Nascar, Ann? Nascar?”

“Okay. Fine. Maybe not Nascar guy. But try to keep an open mind.”

Leslie idly flipped to the next one, feeling like she was more humoring Ann than actually looking for a “mate.” But then she started reading: _Attentive lover of the full person—body and mind._

Well, that was intriguing.

Ann must have noticed she stopped clicking. “Find someone? Let me see.”

“Oh, I don’t know. This one actually sounds kind of nice, though.”

_Hobbies: Staying informed, collecting globes, enjoying the arts, finding beauty in the mundane._

Leslie was the most informed person she knew, and she loved the mundane. One of her favorite places in the world was the bench in the hallway across from the wildflower mural in City Hall. Simple, perfect.

She couldn’t help smiling as she kept reading: _Favorite place: Any large bookstore where I can get lost._ She hated libraries, but she loved books, and she could spend hours in a big bookstore. Maybe that’s what she should be doing with her summer. With someone else who enjoyed big bookstores?

“There’s no picture,” Ann pointed out. “That’s a really bad sign.”

“Maybe he’s just shy. Or he doesn’t own a camera. Or he’s not obsessed with outward appearances.”

Ann laughed knowingly. “Maybe he’s covered in warts. Maybe he has three chins.”

Ann had a point. Pawnee was known for its obesity. And yet …

“I think I’m going to head out, Ann. I’m more tired than I thought.”

“Are you sure? I didn’t mean to push this on you …”

“No, Ann, it’s totally fine. You’re an amazing friend. I’m just going to bed early, I think.”

“Oh … okay. Well, see you tomorrow?”

Leslie smiled sheepishly. “Probably.”

\--

Leslie puttered around her house for forty minutes before finally giving in to the urge to turn on her computer and look at that profile again.

There wasn’t much there. While most Hoosier Mate users identified themselves with what at least appeared to be real names, mystery man was listed as “Nerd Boy.” Leslie thought it was cute—it showed he had a sense of humor about himself. And she felt like she could relate to someone who considered himself nerdy.

But it didn’t list his age, or his height, or even his occupation.

What little was there, though, was interesting. The few lines tapped directly into something inside her and made her feel like maybe she had a kindred spirit out there somewhere. And maybe this was silly, but she felt like she needed someone like that at the moment, when everything she cared about was so much under attack.

And maybe he wasn’t going to be the love of the life, or even a romantic prospect (who could tell something like that from a computer screen?), but he seemed like someone she wanted to get to know.

On an impulse, Leslie created a user name, Pawnee Lover. Skipping over the profile form, she went straight to the message screen and started typing out a note to Nerd Boy. 

Then she hit send before she could second-guess herself.

\--

Ben Wyatt was having a bad day. Come to think of it, he was having a lot of bad days lately.

But today, he’d already had a run-in with Joe from Sewage, who had a truly impressive talent for stringing together vulgar obscenities. He’d met with a delegation of teachers who were adamant about the importance of maintaining reasonable staff-to-student ratios. And now he was trying to crunch some numbers for the city planning department. Apparently there was this intersection near the library that had been identified as particularly dangerous for pedestrians, and he was going to have to carve out some room in the budget for a streetlight and crosswalk for the protection of library users.

Yech. Libraries. Ben much preferred bookstores.

Returning from the meeting with the planners, he turned a corner into their makeshift office to see no other than Leslie Knope. She was talking to his partner, who had probably just made his job even harder by agreeing to something he had no hope of being able to deliver on.

“Leslie Knope. What a surprise.” It wasn’t a surprise. In the past few days, she had tried to schedule no fewer than 14 meetings with him.

Sure enough, this time Chris had promised her they could make some kind of children’s concert happen. And as usual, Ben got to be the one to tell her it wasn’t possible. Some days he hated this good cop/bad cop routine he and Chris had going. Especially where pretty, passionate deputy parks directors were concerned.

As Chris jogged out of the room, sure enough she diverted her attention to him. “Ben, let’s talk solutions.”

“Leslie, Pawnee is broke. There is no money for a concert. Okay?” He was kind of proud of how gently he was breaking that to her, given his dark mood, but she looked like he’d just told her that he hated children. Which was kind of outrageous, considering today alone he was trying to preserve the quality of their education and keep them from getting flattened on their way to the library.

But it hardly seemed right to lay all that on her. “Look, Idaho cut their parks department by 80 percent, and Idaho is basically one giant park,” he reasoned instead.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Ben—Pawnee is better than Idaho.”

“No. Pawnee is not special.” He stood up, pointing to the chart for emphasis, suddenly annoyed that she was giving him such a hard time when there were so many other needs he had to balance here. Did she really think parks was all he had to worry about? “Your department … all the way down here, is not a priority.”

The look on her face made him feel like a complete asshole.

As she left, he turned back to his computer, flipping over to his personal e-mail account for a moment. Most days he’d get an e-mail from his sister, and it somehow helped him get through it if he could see a picture of his nephew eating an ice-cream cone, or one of those cheesy jokes that for some reason Kate still bothered to forward.

He had one new message, and it was from someone called “Pawnee Lover.” Just what he needed—now the whack jobs who hated him had discovered his personal e-mail. Ben almost deleted it but at the last second clicked, chiding himself for being some kind of glutton for punishment. But in spite of everything, he actually believed in people’s right to be heard, and at least they cared.

What was there caught him off guard.

_I’ve never responded to a personal ad before, but something about your profile really spoke to me. It’s not every day that you find someone who cares so much about staying informed and has a real appreciation for the simpler pleasures in life. I don’t know if we’re a “match,” but I’ve been feeling really disheartened lately, and it’s just nice to know that someone like you is out there in the world. I hope you find what you’re looking for. Message me if you want to talk more._

_PL_

Okay, so, spam. He had never signed up with any service called Hoosiermate.com, obviously.

But something about the message sounded a little too genuine—it didn’t exactly seem like a virus out to infect his computer or a porn website trying to get him to pay for downloads. Out of curiosity, he clicked on the link at the bottom.

It took him to a screen where he could type in a reply under the screen name “Nerd Boy,” which was apparently linked to his personal e-mail account. Nerd Boy. Great, someone out there had a delightful sense of humor.

Looking at the profile, he saw that Nerd Boy apparently enjoyed globes and Star Wars and current events.

Ben didn’t know how to feel about that, that whoever had created this profile had done it to make fun of him, but in doing so had managed not to hit too far off the mark. He had this idea in the back of his head that maybe if people really knew him, knew the guy who liked sci-fi movies and taking long morning walks and spending hours reading the Sunday paper, they’d realize he wasn’t some fascist hardass out to ruin everything.

But maybe he’d been kidding himself, and they’d just mock that guy as Nerd Boy. The thought made him sad.

Then he looked back at the message from Pawnee Lover, this mystery woman whose own profile was blank, but who apparently liked the sound of that guy.

And he did something crazy. He wrote her back.

\--

Leslie was in a foul mood by the time she got back to her house that evening. How dare Ben call her department low priority? Was putting a smile on a child’s face ever a low priority? Was providing a service or wanting to do your job ever a low priority?

Of course she knew her department wasn’t the only department, and it was insulting that he’d even imply that she didn’t get that. But if he’d just sit down with her and look away from his spreadsheets for five minutes, they could talk solutions. They could figure out a way to get this done without adversely affecting the rest of the government. There were always ways, if you were the kind of person willing to look for them.

But he wasn’t that kind of person, and it was deeply disappointing to her. For a brief moment last week, when she’d found out he was the Benji Wyatt of her teenaged fantasies, she’d let herself think he was someone like her, someone who deep down understood the things that mattered to her.

Somehow, the fact that she’d been mistaken made her even angrier at him.

When she had finally calmed herself down enough to sit down, Leslie checked her e-mail and was surprised to see a message from Nerd Boy. So much had been going on today, she had completely forgotten about the short note she’d sent out into the ether last night. Curious, she opened the message.

_Hi! This is awkward, but … I never put a profile on Hoosiermate.com (is that a real name for a website? Good lord. I think my head just exploded). The only explanation I can think of is that someone must have made a fake one for me as a joke. That kind of thing happens to me a lot. Not the fake dating profile, that’s a first, but hair in my food, gum in my pockets, that sort of thing. Hmm. Maybe the level of animosity people feel for me is not the first thing I should be telling you about myself. At any rate, I’m only in Pawnee for a few months, so I wasn’t planning on dating anyone here. I don’t really date much anyway. I travel a lot for my job, so I’m never in one place for long, and I’ve never been one for the casual fling. Just not built that way, I guess. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you all that either? I’m really not very good at this._

_Can I ask you something? This might sound completely weird and pathetic, and I will totally understand if the answer is no. You should probably just delete this e-mail and move on to the next profile, someone who’s more permanently local and not a total human disaster. But getting your message was like this little ray of sunlight on an otherwise stormy day. You could say that I too enjoyed discovering someone like you is out there in the world, and I wouldn’t mind hearing from you again. So would you write to me? Tell me something about yourself, anything, maybe one of those simple pleasures you mentioned enjoying._

_NB_

At first Leslie was embarrassed and disappointed, that the person she’d found so interesting, so possibly perfect for her, didn’t even exist, and had in fact turned out to be someone’s idea of a joke. What did that say about her?

But then she noticed the initials he’d signed with. This man who’d been the victim of the prank had for some reason adopted the Nerd Boy moniker anyway. Something about that was self-deprecating and endearing, in the same way that the user name had originally seemed to her. And that made her curious enough to read his message again, in case she could glean any more clues as to who he might be.

The phrase “ray of sunlight” leaped out at her this time, giving her an idea.

Ben Wyatt was wrong. Sometimes the small things, “low-priority” things, do matter to people. They make a difference. They brighten a day. They matter.

She was going to put on a children’s concert one way or another, even if it was the one bright spot she could offer the residents of Pawnee this summer. She would figure out a way to do it.

Just as soon as she wrote back to Nerd Boy.


	2. Chapter 2

Ben was about ready to kill Chris at the moment.

“You are all super amazing!” he was up there saying. “You are what make Pawnee great, and I am totally in support of your inspiring efforts here today. Now my partner Ben needs to say something!”

Everyone started clapping and cheering, just in time for Ben to be the killjoy. “Yeah, we’re shutting this down. The concert is cancelled, everybody.”

Right on cue, Leslie spun on him with fire in her eyes, yellow hair flashing in the sunlight, once again fixating on him as the villain. “No, here’s the thing though, Ben. It’s not cancelled,” she practically spat at him. “We’re putting it on because the stage was already built, everything was donated for free by local vendors. Everybody here believes that what we’re doing is essential. Freddy Spaghetti will sing.”

And … there was that asshole feeling again. Did she really think he was still going to shut it down if it wasn’t affecting the budget, just out of spite?

Before he could defend himself, a large black woman Ben hadn’t met before walked up and informed them Freddy Spaghetti had already rebooked at a library in Eagleton. Somehow Leslie seemed to blame him for that too, and Ben was relieved when someone else volunteered to fill in and sing about pickles. Or sex. Or something, Ben wasn’t paying too much attention.

As that guy ran off to get his guitar or his six-piece orchestra or whatever he had in mind, Ben turned away from the group, took off his sunglasses, and got out his Blackberry. It was shaping up to be another one of those days, and he desperately needed a reminder that not everyone in the world hated his guts.

Sure enough, his sister Kate had come through with a link to an Onion article: “Minnesota Twins Shocked to Learn You Can Score 2 Runs in Same Play.” Ha! Better than usual.

But then below that … another message from Pawnee Lover.

Ben walked a few more steps away from everyone and made sure no one was looking at him—which was silly, because it wasn’t like anyone could see what was on his phone—and shielded the screen from the sun so he could better read the message.

_Of course I will write to you! But wait … does that mean your favorite movie isn’t books? That’s disappointing. Not that I don’t like movies. But I read a lot. Do you?_

__

__

I can’t believe anyone puts hair in your food or gum in your pockets. Who does that? Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “There are plenty of reasons for fighting, but no reason ever to hate without reservation.” I’ve always thought that it’s okay to disagree, but there’s no excuse for treating someone badly. And also, Vonnegut was born in Indiana.

If it makes you feel any better, your little note inspired me to fight for something, and it’s a small thing, but I’m going to do it. It’s going to be like a “ray of sunlight.” It’s going to brighten up all of Pawnee. No it won’t. That’s an exaggeration. But keep your eyes on the skies, maybe you’ll see it.

Here’s one simple pleasure I enjoy, since you asked: watching a happy child. Have you ever seen the gleam in their eyes when they smile, the way they clap their pudgy little hands and jump up and down? And they’ll do it for the simplest things. I love it.

Now tell me one of yours.

PL

For a few moments, the rest of the world melted away, and Ben was alone to linger over her words. How could she manage to sound so passionate and kindhearted and interesting in so few paragraphs? And damn it, she sounded cute too. It was something about the way she’d just randomly mentioned that Vonnegut was a Hoosier—as if that lent more weight to the sentiment somehow.

And Ben started to wonder what she had planned, what little ray of sunlight she was trying to put out into the world. Maybe she was somewhere with kids. Maybe she was even going to be at this concert today, although suddenly he hoped she didn’t actually have any kids. Not that he didn’t like children, but it was just, he didn’t want her to be—

_Taken._

Before he could follow through on the ramifications of that thought, a sudden commotion snapped him out of his reverie. It was a screech of tires and a girlish scream and—shit. The guy who was supposed to sing about pickles had just been hit by a car.

Ben dialed 911 and filled them in on the situation, then set off toward his Saturn, suddenly determined that this children’s concert was going to happen.

“Ambulance is on the way,” he called out to a short guy in a polo who was trotting over to the accident site.

Forty-five minutes later Ben was in the parking lot of the Eagleton Library, offering a lot of cash to a musician who only sang about pasta, and questioning his own sanity.

It was a strange thing to do for a woman he’d exchanged all of three messages with and never even met, and who may or may not be a fan of Freddy Spaghetti.

\--

Miraculously, due to the generosity of a mysterious benefactor who swooped in at the last moment, the concert had gone on, and Leslie was contentedly looking out over the sea of young giggly faces. It might be a long summer of too much television and not enough sunlight for them, but she didn’t want to think of that right now. For the moment, she just wanted to enjoy the familiar satisfaction of having provided a service for people. And they loved it!

On the far edge of the crowd, she noticed Ben Wyatt, standing with his arms folded across his chest looking awkward and self-conscious. Of course her success would make him uncomfortable.

She caught his eye, trying to gloat wordlessly across the crowd at him: _See what you can do when people come together, when you’re just willing to try?_

He barely acknowledged her, just wiggled a couple fingers in what might have been … well she wasn’t sure what that was supposed to be, but it felt dismissive. Then he turned around and walked away, and she was able to read that gesture more clearly: _So?_

What kind of hard-hearted monster didn’t want the kids to have their concert? But she wasn’t going to let BentheJerk bring her down again today. This was hers. Hers, and the children’s, and the park’s department’s and …

… Nerd Boy’s.

Suddenly she felt the urge to share this little success with her new acquaintance, sensing for reasons she couldn’t quite pin down that he’d be someone who’d appreciate it. She wondered if he’d gotten her message, if it had made him smile, if he was thinking of her at all.

When she got back to her house that night, the first thing she did was to check her e-mail. Sure enough, there was a message from him.

_I did something for you today. Well, not exactly for you, but … I read what you wrote, and it made me smile, and it made me want to make someone else smile, and so I did. It felt good, better than I’ve felt for a while. So thank you for that._

It briefly occurred to Leslie that maybe Nerd Boy was the one who paid Freddy Spaghetti, but she immediately dismissed the idea as absurd—that would have been too big of a coincidence. Still, it was nice to think they both took some pleasure in making someone happy today. It made her feel somehow close to him. Eagerly, she read the rest of the message:

_I do like books. And I also like movies. But especially books that are also movies. (Are you by any chance a fan of Harry Potter?) The strange thing about that profile, and I try not to think about who might have wrote it or what this says about me, is that a lot of it was basically true. Not all, but most of it was, or at least the gist of it, and I’m not sure I’m ready yet to say which was what. But given that much, it occurs to me that I’m at a disadvantage here. Who is Pawnee Lover? I’m increasingly anxious to know._

__

__

Here’s one of my simple pleasures, since you asked. I mentioned that I travel a lot, and I don’t take a whole lot on the road with me other than clothing and necessities, but I always make room in my suitcase for a high-quality, large, fluffy towel. Wow, that sounds shallow compared to what you said about children’s happiness. But there you go—I just love a good towel in my life.

_NB_

Leslie’s heartbeat quickened as she read what he wrote. He loved Harry Potter? And towels? He seemed almost too good to be true.

But he could still be anyone—could be 75 years old, or a serial killer, or a librarian.

God, she hoped he wasn’t a librarian. There was something too sinister and smug-seeming about librarians, like they were better than everyone else because they could enforce silence. Did any librarians have jobs that required travel?

And there was the thing—no matter who he was, one thing he had told her for certain was that he wasn’t staying in Pawnee. It would be foolish to get too attached.

She considered carefully what she wanted to write back.

\--

Ben Wyatt never checked his e-mail account first thing in the morning. He was addicted to google reader, and he’d browse the daily news and check the baseball scores while he drank his first cup of coffee. But he always held off on seeing if he had any messages from Kate—instead rationing them for the inevitable moments of the day when he’d crave a friendly face, or the cyber-equivalent of that.

But the day after the concert, he woke up giddy and feeling a distinct and disconcerting lack of self-control, and the first thing he did—after putting on the coffee pot, but before it was done percolating—was to log onto gmail, and his big sister was the furthest thing from his thoughts.

He got butterflies in his stomach as he opened up the message he’d been waiting for.

_I love Harry Potter and fluffy towels and people smiling! Have you been stalking me? I’m kidding. (But seriously, have you been stalking me? No really, I’m kidding. Unless I shouldn’t be. Wait, are you?)_

Ben smiled to himself, because she was being funny and cute again, and no, he was not a stalker. But if he knew who she was and where he could find her … yeah, maybe? Or at least he'd be trying to spend time with her ...

_I’m not sure what else to tell you about myself. I’ve been called a workaholic, because I’m very passionate about my work, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It seems like the world would be a better place if more people cared about what they did, don’t you think?_

At that, he smiled again, feeling a rush of warmth toward her because lord knows he’d been accused of overdevotion to work too. The few times he’d manage to cobble together a relationship over the years, his career—the one that was keeping him on the road for now—inevitably became the sticking point. He felt strongly about public service, strongly enough that even after what happened in Partridge, he was still trying to build up his credentials to be taken seriously again. If Pawnee Lover understood that about him …

_But work is a great source of stress for me right now, so I don’t really want to talk about it. You already know the most important thing about me anyway; it’s right in my user name. I am a lover of Pawnee. So if you want to get to know me, you should get to know Pawnee. It’s too bad you won’t have longer to do that. But since you’re only going to be in town a couple months, I’m thinking we should avoid sharing some of the real-life details anyway. I am enjoying talking to you and I hope you write to me again, but maybe it would be best to keep things more impersonal? Tell me what you think, or what you like, but don’t tell me who you are. Would that be okay?_

__

__

_PL_

Ben put his head in his heads, feeling the giddiness drain right out of him, feeling himself being tugged back to reality. He was leaving in two months, she was right. And he didn’t know this woman. She could be anyone—she could be a teenager, or a scam artist, or a librarian.

God, he hoped she wasn’t a librarian. There was something about librarians, the disapproving way they looked down their noses, that reminded him of being 18 and facing down a panel of elders who never thought he should have been elected in the first place. It was that same expression.

And she didn’t sound like that kind of person. If anything, she sounded like the kind of person who would have held his hand and smiled encouragingly at him and said, At least you tried something. (His sister had done that.)

But he didn’t know, and he couldn’t stay here long enough to find out. And he was already getting too attached, and too crazy, and doing ridiculous things like getting her $800 gifts that she probably never even saw. (Who knew that children’s singers were all about the money?)

Ben shut the browser down with a decisive click on the ‘X’ and chugged the rest of his coffee.

He really had to get a grip on himself.

\--

An hour later he was shuffling some papers on the front table of the meeting room, trying to refocus on the job at hand so he could get the hell out of Pawnee before he did anything really stupid, when he heard an all-too-familiar voice.

“Good morning.”

He glanced up to see Leslie, looking overly smug and fully prepared to make his job more difficult.

“Hi. What are you doing here?”

“Ron made me the official parks and rec representative for the budget discussion.”

“But that’s only supposed to be—”

“Essential personnel.” She held up her badge with barely concealed delight. “Shall we get started? I have so many ideas.”

Oh, yeah, she was going to be problem. God, he was so not prepared to deal with this today.

As soon as Chris arrived, Ben pulled him aside.

“Hey, look, ah … I know we’re supposed to be discussing the parks department budget, but do you mind if we push it to the end of the week? I need a couple more days to”—get my head on straight—“look at the line items more closely.”

Chris slapped him on the back. “No problem, Ben, whatever you think is best!” Of course it was not a problem. Nothing ever was with Chris.

Ben managed to get through the day by avoiding eye contact and letting Chris be the one to answer her when she inevitably had opinions on how many buses the city should be running or how the animal-control department should be equipped. Chris was being too conciliatory, as usual, but he’d worry about walking things back again later. Some other day.

It’s not that Ben didn’t like Leslie. At least he didn’t not like Leslie. She was foolishly short-sighted, but she cared. Anyway, what did it matter? She obviously didn’t like him judging by the way she had been staring daggers at him all day.

As soon as Chris dismissed the task force, Ben gathered up his binders as quickly as possible to try to get out of there before she cornered him, but it was too late.

“Ben,” she said in an obvious make-nice voice. “You saw what an unqualified success the children’s concert was last night?”

“If you like that sort of thing,” he muttered noncommittally, making a big show of closing his briefcase. Hopefully this would be a short conversation, and then he could go back to the motel and put on a DVD and leave the land of the muggle-born for a while.

“Plenty of people like that sort of thing, Ben,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice. “Pretty much anyone with a heart.”

“Okay, fine.” Let her think he was heartless. He was hardly going to admit that he’d been the reason Freddy Spaghetti had gone on at all. Give an inch and—you know what they say. Next thing she’d be asking him for an entire concert series.

“I think we should do an entire concert series,” Leslie said, as if she’d read his mind.

He looked at her in disbelief. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously! It was a good event. We already have the stage. The vendors were more than happy with the publicity they got. I’ll recruit the volunteers. A monthly concert series would be just the thing to keep people’s spirits up until this shutdown is over.”

“I think you’re forgetting something.”

“What, Ben? Forgetting to be a stick in the mud? Well, I’m sorry, but nobody ever taught me that particular dance move.”

A momentary image of what Leslie might look like pantomiming a stick-in-the-mud flashed through his head, and he shook his head in frustration. “The musicians! Musicians don’t play for free.” He could personally attest to that.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe our anonymous donor would be willing to help us out. We don’t know unless we try.”

“I can tell you for certain that is not going to happen.”

“How could you possibly know that, Ben? I swear, I have no idea how you can have so little faith in people—”

“Um. I think I have exactly the right amount of faith in people, Leslie.”

“It’s just a concert series, Ben! I’m not asking you for—”

“Just a concert series. Do you hear yourself? Last week, it was just a concert. Next week it’ll be—where does it end?”

“Why should it have to end? Why does there have to be a limit on caring about something, or trying something? What good does it do to give up?”

“It’s not giving up. It’s being realistic! There’s a limit to what you can offer, there are constraints, and—it’s irresponsible, it’s reckless to ignore that. There’s only so much you can—And then you have to—If you get ahead of yourself, it's only going to end in—”

Fuck. Why did it suddenly feel like he wasn’t talking about a children’s concert?

“I’m sorry, Leslie, it was a one-time thing.” He managed to scoot around her, ignoring the stricken look on her face. “I gotta get out of here.”

He hurried away, not looking back, already feeling the cracks in his resolve, but not in any way that would benefit Leslie.

The thing was, he was really feeling the need for a friend in Pawnee. And he was already thinking of what he wanted to write to her.


	3. Chapter 3

Hours after the workday ended, Leslie was still in her office, trying to rally her spirits with a little solo brainstorming session.

“Sell the vegetables from the community garden at a roadside produce stand,” she said into her memo recorder, then mentally tried to calculate how many carrots they’d have to sell to offset the budget cuts. Probably … a lot.

Ugh. Who would want to eat that many vegetables?

And also, there had been that problem with someone trying to grow weed there last summer.

Wait, how much money did pot dealers make?

She brushed the question aside, shaking her head in frustration. She was not going to get Pawnee’s kids hooked on pot just so she could teach them arts and crafts at the rec center. No matter how many potheads were on the art council.

What else could they sell? “Some sort of beverage, maybe lemonade …”

Crap. Now she sounded like she was eight.

Leslie rewound and played the tape back, her slightly tinny-sounding voice reverberating through the empty building as it recounted every idea she’d had for the past three hours, and listened hard for the golden ticket, the big idea that was going to get them out of this mess.

She didn’t hear it. It wasn’t there.

Shoving the recorder into a drawer, she leaned back with a sigh and thumbed her essential personnel badge—a lot of good that was doing her, she thought, glancing around the ghostly still parks department offices. She used to like working late, having all of City Hall to herself and being productive long after everyone else was gone or even asleep. 

Tonight the silence felt different, more permanent, as if the City Hall she knew and loved was more than asleep. And she hated not knowing when it was going to come alive again.

Earlier that evening, she had researched fees for potential musicians for the summer concert series she’d proposed, and reluctantly had to admit that Ben had been right—about that small detail, at least. There were a lot of other things he was still wrong about. A lot a lot.

She could probably raise the money to pay the musicians, but she wasn’t even sure if that was where she should be focusing her energies right now. A concert series would have been nice, and it would have given her something to do this summer, but was it what this town most needed from her?

Pawnee needed her to fight for it. She just hadn’t figured out how.

Leslie pushed back her chair, stood up, and paced back and forth across her small office a few times before setting off through the parks department. She didn’t even know where she was going, but she just felt like she wanted to be moving. Enough of this sitting around and feeling powerless.

Her heels clicked through the eerily quiet hallways, up the stairs, until she inevitably ended up in front of the wallflower mural on the second floor.

It was a spot she came to often. She liked the vibrant colors. She liked the juxtaposition of things she loved—the free feeling of being outdoors on a summer day, combined with the powerful feeling of being in the hallways of government. But there was something else about it, too, the way that it made her feel—

It was the flowers themselves, and what they represented. The deep roots, the way they looked so happy, growing and thriving in the wild, like nothing could mow them down. They were so pretty there, not even BentheJerk could come along with his canister of budgetary Roundup and ruin them. Not that they were actual flowers, but he’d have to go through the art council to paint over it, and why would he do that anyway?

There were some things in City Hall that were still safe.

Feeling a little bit soothed by the sight, she started to head back to get her bag and probably call it a night, but paused as she was passing room 214B—the auditors’ office.

Speak of the devil.

Without thinking, she pushed lightly on the door and was surprised it wasn’t locked, so she went in.

She knew she shouldn’t be here, but she wasn’t snooping. She was just … curious.

Ignoring Chris’s half of the room, Leslie walked over to Ben’s makeshift desk, which looked weirdly innocuous. She wasn’t even sure what she had expected to see there—an actual machete? A giant pair of scissors?

The desktop was uncluttered, save for a neat stack of file folders, a canister of freshly sharpened yellow pencils, one clean notepad, and a calculator—the bulky kind with a printer ribbon. She glanced at the strip of paper it was emitting, but out of context the stream of numbers meant nothing to her, and she couldn’t help but wonder what problem he had been working on, and whether he’d been able to solve it.

Noticing the organizational chart on the wall behind his desk, she flinched. As her fingertips traced lightly over the box in the lower corner, the one that contained her department, she heard Ben’s words all over again—your department, all the way down here, not a priority—and bit her lip. She didn't have long to convince him otherwise. Then the budgetary task force was scheduled to take up the parks department, and giant scissors or not, who knew what would be left of it after Ben was finished.

Turning back toward the door, she came face to face with the map of Pawnee that was hanging next to his desk and felt suddenly defensive on its behalf.

Pawnee was better than Idaho. What did Idaho have? She didn’t know. Potatoes, maybe. What did Ben know about Idaho, or Pawnee, for that matter?

He was wrong, and she’d just have to show him. Pawnee was special.

Back in her own office a few moments later, she reached to shut down her computer but noticed at the last second that a message alert had popped up while she had been taking her walk.

It was from Nerd Boy! Nerd Boy was someone who would get it. She wondered if he’d ever been to Idaho.

It took her a moment to remember what she’d last written to him, about keeping things impersonal. Maybe she’d been too quick to keep him at arm’s length? It could have been nice to have some company this summer from someone who understood where she was coming from. Maybe she could still walk that back.

_I’ve given it some thought—too much thought, probably—and I think you might be right. Stay anonymous, we must, yes, as Yoda would put it. I am Nerd Boy, and you are Pawnee Lover, and that is all we shall be._

Well, that settled that. And also, she realized, the name Nerd Boy kind of fit.

_But I wonder if you even realize how much you’ve already told me with just those two words in your user name. You are someone who loves Pawnee, and that seems to say something about you. I haven’t known Pawnee for very long, but it has a way of getting under your skin, doesn’t it?_

_This town is relentless. Like a dandelion plant, and I’ve never been able to decide how I feel about dandelions. Nobody asks for them, and they’re annoying, and getting rid of them is a pain, but their tenacity is kind of admirable. They’re the color of sunshine, and they have deep roots, and … I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. I did not just compare you to a weed. A gardener? That’s not quite right either. I think I’m comparing you to a person who appreciates wildflowers. Is that too far off the mark?_

Leslie stopped and read the paragraph over again.

It was uncanny. It was almost like he’d walked by the same mural and had the same thoughts about it that day as she had. Of course, those flowers weren’t dandelions, but they were yellow. They reminded her of the kind of flowers that grew in abandoned lots, the kind that some people would look at and call weeds, and that other people would look at and call wildflowers.

It crossed Leslie’s mind that Nerd Boy would like that mural. As she finished reading his message, she wondered if she might ever get to show it to him.

_Sorry if I’m not making much sense. It’s been another strange day, in another strange town, this one stranger than most. But strangely infectious too. So what is it about this place? I’m serious. If you won’t tell me about yourself, at least tell me about this town you love so much._

_NB_

By the time she was finished reading his short missive, she was smiling for the first time that evening. He was right, Pawnee was special—and it seemed to say something about him that he got that, after spending such a short time here.

It seemed to say something about Pawnee too.

She reached for her memo recorder one more time and clicked it on. “Pawnee is better than Idaho,” she said into the little microphone, her words echoing through the empty building.

A plan was starting to take shape.

\--

Ever since he had arrived in Pawnee, Ben had been finding himself doing things it never would have occurred to him that he’d do. Online dating, for example. Not that they were dating, because they had pretty much established that was not what they were doing. Writing to an online pen pal?

Yeah. Somehow that didn’t make it sound any better.

Whatever it was they were doing, he just knew that he didn’t want it to end. So when he got her talking about Pawnee, he kept asking questions, partly because it was interesting—seriously, the era when everyone was worshipping Zorp sounded straight out of a kitschy sci-fi novel—but partly because he liked the way that she talked about it. He’d been moving around for so many years, he’d forgotten what it was like to feel so tied to a place. Something about it was really appealing in a way that he hadn’t quite put words to yet.

So when she mentioned how much she loved the snow globe museum, he made a point of going, just so that he could tell her later that he went and keep the conversation going.

Voluntarily visiting a snow globe museum by himself—add that to the list of things he never thought he’d be doing. Good lord—his sister would have a field day with that one. But apparently this was what happened in places like Pawnee.

Places like Pawnee. He was starting to think there was no other place like Pawnee.

It was different from any other town he’d been to, and he’d been to quite for a few. People here cared. They cared—loudly—all over his voicemail, and his e-mail box, and his lunch break, and his meeting prep time. But for as many feathers as he had ruffled and names he’d been called, no one had keyed his car or done weird unappetizing things to his takeout or any of the usual nasty stuff he’d faced.

The worst thing anyone had done to him since he arrived in Pawnee was to make that fake dating profile for him, and … that actually had turned out okay. Better than okay, possibly, as long as he avoided thinking too critically about what on earth he was doing writing to a stranger like she was a long-lost … something.

Even the snow globe museum was turning out better than expected. It was quiet and cool, a nice change from the harsh June sun beating down outside. As he entered, an older woman glanced up at him disinterestedly from behind a small table and charged him five dollars for admission. Then she pointed to a sign that proclaimed “Do not handle the snow globes. Under any circumstances. This will be enforced.”

Under the crisp block letters, a few small words were scrawled in pencil, and he leaned forward to read them. “This means you, Leslie!” For a moment he thought it might be his Leslie—his colleague Leslie—but quickly dismissed the notion. There must be more than one Leslie in Pawnee, right?

Ben started working his way through the museum, inspecting various winter scenes—one of children ice skating on a frozen pond, an idyllic glade of evergreen trees, a sleepy town in a snowstorm. They reminded him of Minnesota, and he felt that pang of longing for the feeling of belonging that was starting to creep into his consciousness—along with the touch of nervousness that always accompanied any thoughts of Minnesota.

Moving on, he worked his way past elaborate Christmas and Arctic displays, then started to inspect a large set of globes containing scenes from Pawnee’s history. Some of them were interesting, little models capturing moments in time—the signing of the town charter, the first lighting of the town Christmas tree—but others were as weird and disturbing as most of the murals in Pioneer Hall. He leaned in close to inspect a winter street scene that looked pleasant enough, until he noticed the Native American who appeared to be stuck under the wheel of a wagon. Was that supposed to be symbolic, or—?

“You lied to me.”

He started at the sound of Leslie Knope’s voice behind him, bumping his head on the shelf directly in front of him. The shelf of globes rattled a bit, setting off little snow flurries within a few.

“What are you—what?” Good lord. Was she following him? “What are you doing here?”

“The parks are closed,” she said matter-of-factly, frowning at him.

He raised an eyebrow, rubbing his temple, thinking of the sign by the door. “And this is where you hang out when the parks are closed.”

“Why are you here?”

This did not sound like friendly curiosity, and he wasn’t going to explain the whole thing about his pen pal, so instead of answering, he turned back to the display and asked a question that had been on his mind since he saw that sign by the door. “What is the point of a snow globe if you can’t pick it up? The snow just sits there.”

He was genuinely curious why this would be forbidden, but when he glanced back at Leslie he realized he’d offended her.

“How do you know that’s the rule for everyone? Maybe that’s just the rule for state auditors. Maybe they’re worried you’re going to break anything you touch.”

He couldn’t break what was already broken, he thought wryly, but didn’t dare say it out loud. Not in a room full of glass.

Leslie reached for a snow globe as if to demonstrate that she was in a different category of patron, and immediately the elderly curator—not asleep after all—materialized out of nowhere to scold.

“Put the globe down, Leslie. You’ve been warned three times, and I’m going to have to ban you for 30 days. That’s the rule.”

The woman made those little tsk-tsk sounds that old ladies and librarians make, and Leslie looked like she had just seen the last straw and wanted to snap it in half.

Ben felt a surge of sympathy for her: the parks were closed, her department was in limbo, and now she was being banned from her favorite hangout. So what if it was weird; he felt bad for her, so he tried to smile compassionately.

“It’s a dumb rule.”

“Maybe you’re dumb,” she said, then spun on her heels and stalked toward the door.

After a moment, he followed her, catching up with her in the parking lot. “Hey, wait. Um, what did you mean I lied to you?”

“Idaho.” She took a deep breath, pulling herself under control. “You said Idaho cut 80 percent of its parks department.”

“… excuse me?”

“The Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation had the portion of its budget that comes from the state general fund cut by 80 percent. But that’s not the whole story, is it? Most of the state parks department’s funding comes from entrance fees. Cutting 80 percent of the general fund budget is a mere one-fifth reduction overall. Still significant, but not what you implied.”

Okay, first of all, she looked that up? And secondly—what was she getting at? “We can’t charge entrance fees to Ramsett Park, Leslie. Your department doesn’t have other revenue streams.”

“I know that!” she snapped. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t have lied to me. And now I’m going to need half an hour to give a presentation to the task force before it considers the parks department budget.”

He didn’t quite see the connection there, but it seemed like the least he could do. “Fine. Half an hour.”

“And I’m going to need the projector. I’ll bring a stereo.” He raised an eyebrow at her, just slightly, and she glared at him defensively. “It’s a multimedia presentation.”

Of course it was.

He watched Leslie drive away, sighed, and then went back into the museum. He’d already seen enough to be able to credibly mention he’d been there, but he wanted to spend a little more time looking at that display on Pawnee’s history. This place was weird, but a really intriguing kind of weird.

And anyway, he’d already paid his admission.

\--

Leslie had been delighted to find out that Nerd Boy had gone to the snowglobe museum.

As much as she had talked it up in the past, she’d never been able to get a boyfriend to go with her. Even Dave, who had seemed so eager to please, had always managed to come up with excuses. Not only had Nerd Boy gone, he had followed up afterward to ask such specific questions about the snow globes pertaining to Pawnee’s history. Now there was a boy after her own heart.

Not that anyone was after anyone’s heart here.

Then they had gotten on the subject of history in general, and it turned out he was as much of a buff as she was.

They started talking politics and trading historical quotes, and she could tell by the ones he sent her that he was either someone who thought like her, or that he was paying close enough attention to the way she thought about things to pick ones she’d like. The implications of that made her feel warm inside, even as she was brushing away any thoughts about why she felt that way. She had enough to think about this week anyway, with this big presentation she was preparing.

Leslie copied a few of the most relevant quotes he’d sent onto post-it notes and affixed them to the inside of the binder where she was keeping her notes and materials, so that every time she opened it she got a little pep talk from someone in her corner.

On the day of her presentation, she read them again as the task force members were milling about before taking their seats.

_Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.—Teddy Roosevelt_

_The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.—Thomas Jefferson_

_Sometimes, the only realists are the dreamers.—Paul Wellstone_

She’d been familiar with the Jefferson and Roosevelt quotes, of course, but the Wellstone one was new, and she loved it. He’d been a popular senator in Minnesota until dying in a plane crash in 2002, which was too bad, because when she read up on him, she found out that he’d really been her kind of politician.

Across the room, Leslie eyed Ben, looking tense and uptight, and remembered that he was from Minnesota. But he’d probably voted for someone else back then—someone who thought the only realists were numbers robots, she was sure.

When she finished setting up the projector, she cued up the stereo to play the mix she had prepared. It started off with the somber strains of the prelude from _The Ten Commandments_ soundtrack.

Her title card flashed up on the screen, and she read it aloud to begin her presentation. “Pawnee is better than Idaho,” she proclaimed with cheerful confidence.

A tiny strangled sound caught her attention, and she glanced over to see Ben cover it in a cough, his eyes darkening perceptibly. Not everybody was born supportive, she thought, and she’d be bent out of shape too if all her preconceived notions about something were about to be toppled. Served him right.

After allowing herself a small smile, she launched into a brief explanation of what had happened to the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, focusing on one detail that had seemed particularly relevant to her—that the park system of Idaho brought in $40 million of tourism revenue to the state each year, almost twice the amount of its entire operating budget. A graph popped up behind her to illustrate this point.

“Those dollars go to local businesses, they keep people in jobs, they foster a healthy economy that benefits everyone, and they contribute property and income tax dollars to the general fund. So you see, while Idaho’s parks preserve nature and provide for the enjoyment of park users, they also are key to the overall wellbeing of the state. They are what help make Idaho a place where people want to live, and a place where they want to visit.”

As she spoke, images of Idaho state parks flashed on the screen behind her. Then her background music shifted to a jauntier theme from Beverly Hills Cop, and she shifted gears. “But come on. We don’t live in Idaho. Thank goodness, right?” This elicited some appreciative chuckles around the room. Ben was the only one who still looked stony faced, but she ignored him. “I’d rather eat corn than potatoes any day,” she quipped with a bright smile, then turned more serious again.

“But the same is true here,” she said. “Some in Pawnee might think of parks as the lowest priority department, and we do have one of the smallest budgets. Of course we need roads to drive on, and schools to teach our children, and sewers to carry our byproducts. But we also need parks. The Pawnee Department of Parks and Recreation has a reputation for providing excellent services for all age groups.”

She detailed a sampling of the services, accompanied by colorful photographs of happy people enjoying the many parks programs. As the music behind her crescendoed, she worked up to her conclusion.

“All of these programs add to the quality of life we have come to expect in Pawnee. We take pride in our local parks and recreation programs, and Pawnee has been a better place for that. These programs are part of the reason that people choose to live here, instead of going to Eagleton or Snerling. When people live in Pawnee, they make their homes here, they pay taxes, they work here, and they spend their money at local businesses. We all benefit. A strong and vibrant parks and recreation department is crucial to the long-term health of our community. We are part of what makes Pawnee special.”

She finished to a smattering of applause, and then Chris Traeger joined her in the front of the room and patted her on the back, which was a little weird, but good probably. “Thank you for that wonderful presentation, Leslie. You are an inspiration to us all.”

Leslie was more worried about what Ben thought, but he wasn’t even looking at her, instead fumbling with something on his phone.

\--

Ben seethed quietly during Leslie’s presentation, which clearly had been designed specifically to make him look like more of an asshole. Why else would she have even brought up Idaho? He was starting to wish he’d never even heard of the state's budget situation, much less made the foolhardy mistake of trying to quote numbers off the top of his head to someone who filed every little detail away to use against him later.

Leslie Knope, overzealous fact checker. Leslie Knope, spiteful motivational speaker.

Oh, it was good. He had to give her that, at least—she could give a speech and work an audience and win people over in a way that he kind of envied. She was likable. She showed colorful pictures of cute happy kids and endearingly ancient seniors and used words like “future leaders of tomorrow” and “keepers of our history.”

But they were just words. They didn’t do a thing to change the financial situation of this city, and he had to recommend the same set of changes regardless. The only thing she’d accomplished was to set him up to sound like even more of a jerk than he already was going to.

As she concluded to something he recognized from _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ (low blow, appropriating one of his favorite movies while making him look bad), he slipped out his Blackberry and flipped to a message he’d gotten last night from Pawnee Lover. He just felt like he needed the boost before having to drag himself up there in front of this cheerfully hostile crowd, and she had written to him in response to something he had mentioned about the friction he was facing at work.

_Believe me, I sympathize with having to deal with difficult people. At times this summer I’ve felt like the whole world is stacked against me, challenging what I’m trying to accomplish, and it’s all I can do just to keep moving forward on the path that feels right. But Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.” Your heart seems like it’s in the right place. Trust it, and be true to it, and you will be fine. Hopefully, so will I._

_PL_

He took a deep breath and reminded himself that what he was doing was necessary, that he was doing what needed to be done to get Pawnee on the path to financial health, and that other people would be able to build on that after he was gone. The Leslie Knopes of the world might not understand that about him, but the work he did paved the way for people like her to do what they did—within the reasonable constraints of a publicly funded budget.

Then he gathered up his own presentation—a series of gray scale graphs and spreadsheets—and headed up to the front of the room to lay his case out for the task force—nonmusically.

He had to admit, the recommendations looked pretty severe. He’d done what he could to keep the cuts low impact—mowing the parks every other week instead of every week, eliminating some landscaping niceties such as flower beds—but those only went so far. Most of the department’s youth programs, its senior programs, and its athletic programs were operating at a deficit, and they couldn’t be sustained as currently implemented.

But he left the staff mostly intact, except for a few maintenance and seasonal workers. One thing he’d realized after years of doing this was that if the employees he left behind were quality, they’d find a way to work with what they had and make it into something more. And hopefully with a little more foresight.

He hoped, at least, that was the case here.

After a lot of wrangling and outrage and debate among the task force members, he managed to stick to his original plan, plus two youth basketball teams. Apparently, that was the thing people cared most about. Whatever. It was done.

Or at least, so he had thought. Leslie Knope hung back after the task force dispersed for the day. Her face was all scrunched up, and he didn’t know if she was going to burst into tears or fly into a rage. To her credit, she didn’t do either—yet.

“Did you even listen to my presentation?” she demanded petulantly.

Still annoyed about the whole incident but not wanting to fan the flames, he flailed about for something diplomatic to say. “Of course. Ah, your slideshow was very … colorful. And you obviously have good taste in movie soundtracks.”

And her research on Idaho was actually pretty impressive. He was going to have to look that up later.

Leslie narrowed her eyes at him threateningly, so apparently that wasn’t the right thing to say.

“You’re … an asshole.”

He sighed, his sympathy for her mingling with his frustration at how much harder she’d made it for him to sell the task force on a reasonable level of cuts.

“Yeah, I think you’ve already made that point today.”

“What?”

“Your presentation? Clearly designed to make me look like a jerk. Thanks for that. Really did a bang-up job in there, if that was your goal.”

“Um. You’re the one who made you look like a jerk. Nobody else in here wanted to gut my department. That was all you.”

Seriously, he was really getting tired of being the villain in this story.

“No. That was the numbers. You can use as many pretty words and pictures and Academy Award-nominated theme songs as you want, but it doesn’t change the numbers. Look at this.”

He reached for the binder that contained his spreadsheets for the rest of Pawnee’s government and started flipping through the pages, because they were the only thing in this entire town he had on his side (outside of his gmail account). “Here, this is the public works department, streetlights and potholes that need to be repaired for safety reasons. And this—animal control. The raccoon problem is seriously out of control. Do you want me to ignore that? Or here, schools. If I cut any more from the education budget, class sizes are going to go through the roof. Is that what you want?”

He paused and looked up at her to find her gaping at him, looking kind of stricken and overwhelmed, and he reminded himself how hard this probably was for her. Yeah, he definitely felt like an asshole today. Fuck.

“It’s the numbers,” he said less forcefully, trying to soften it. “There’s a finite budget. Everything has to come from somewhere.”

As he stopped talking, he gestured a little helplessly with his hands and watched her carefully, pleading to her with his eyes to understand this. It’s not me. It’s the numbers. And then he wondered why he even cared what she thought of him.

“Give that to me,” Leslie finally said.

“Give you … what? My binder?”

“Yes! If the numbers are as bad as you say, I want to see them.”

“Which … wait, all of it?”

“Yes. All of it. Whatever you have in that binder. I may be the deputy director of the lowest priority department in Pawnee, but I know how to read a spreadsheet.” She made sarcastic little air quotes around lowest priority.

“I didn’t say …” He really wasn’t getting through to her. And maybe if she looked through the information for herself, she’d see the situation her city was in and not hold this against him so much. Or maybe, at least, she’d just leave, and he could get out of here, go back to his motel, and … write to his pen pal. God, his life was so weird right now. “Okay. I’ll get Chris’s assistant to make copies for you.”

“Good. Thank you,” she said stiffly, and then they just looked at each other for a moment, warily. And he had the odd urge to say something to her, something that would let her know that he wasn’t this evil robot who hated kids and wanted to keep all the parks closed forever.

“Hey, um … it was a good presentation,” he said finally, shoving his hands awkwardly into his pockets. “You’re a … persuasive speaker.”

“It’s called having people skills,” she snapped. “You should get some.” Then she spun on her heels, her yellow hair swishing around her head as she turned away from him.

He stood there for a few long moments after she left, wondering how he’d gotten to this place where people like Leslie hated his guts. He liked his job, and he thought he was doing something good—something necessary—but sometimes it wore on him, and he wanted to be on the other side of the fence. To fight for things instead of against them, to stay someplace afterward and help build it all back up, instead of swooping into another town to start the whole painful process over again.

Taking out his Blackberry, he looked at the message from Pawnee Lover again— _Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.”_ —and wondered if she had any idea what her (and Eleanor’s) words of encouragement meant to him.

Back at his motel, he spent the evening half-watching a baseball game, compulsively refreshing his browser hoping to get another message from her, because her notes always cheered him up. Sometime after 11, he finally did, but it was different from what he was expecting:

_Have you ever met someone who just brings out the worst in you? I think I’m a nice person. I get along with a lot of different kinds of people. One of my best friends is a man whose beliefs are so far removed from mine, he thinks some of the things I love the most shouldn’t even exist. Still, we respect each other, and he’s one of the best people I know. But there’s this person in my life right now who just … I can’t even explain it. It’s not just that we disagree. It’s like he doesn’t have any respect for me. He doesn’t even have any interest in hearing my side. And it makes me feel awful. And it makes me say awful things to him. And then I feel worse._

_I’m single. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that. And I don’t mind it—I love my life, and my friends, and my work. But once in a while, on a day like this, I wish my house wasn’t empty when I walked through the door. I wish someone was here, and I could just say “I had a bad day”—that’s it, that’s all I want. I don’t want to have to make plans with a friend. I don’t even want to hold up my end of a phone conversation. I just want to say the words, and have someone hear them, someone who’s on my side._

_I’m having a bad day. That’s all, I just wanted to tell you. And to thank you, for being here, even if it’s only on my computer. It makes the room feel a little less empty._

_PL_

 

Ben sighed loudly, to his own empty room, feeling a sharp tugging in his chest and a bit of a lump in his throat.

He knew the feeling.

\--

Leslie got up at 5 a.m., wanting to get an early start. She was determined to comb through every single line of every single department’s budget to see for herself if it was really as bad as Ben kept insisting. There had to be something, somewhere, that the auditors had missed. Something that could be squeezed, or economized, or stretched in some way to keep the parks budget from being mauled quite so drastically.

Except that she didn’t have the copies yet. And Chris’s assistant probably wouldn’t get to City Hall until at least 8:30. So she really didn’t have anything to do.

Why couldn’t Ben just have made the copies for her himself? She bet he didn’t even want her to have them. He was probably hiding something, some pocket of money that he didn’t want her to get her hands on because he hated kids and wanted all the parks to be closed forever.

Actually … that seemed a little harsh, even for Ben. He seemed more misguided than outright evil. It’s not like he was Greg Pikitis.

Except that she was kind of clinging to the hope that he was, pretty much, the equivalent of a teenaged vandal—out to destroy everything she loved just for the sake of destroying it. Because the other possibility—that Ben was right, that there was no good way out of this, that her job as she knew it was gone for the forseeable future, that her entire purpose in life was—

Well, it was a possibility that was difficult to face.

And the fact that he treated everything as so black and white, so robotically detached from it all—how many times this summer had she heard ‘It’s the numbers. It’s the numbers’? Like these were just line items and figures, instead of lives that were going to be altered, and projects she’d poured her heart into, and children and seniors who were getting shafted—

It made her angry. It made her want to call him names. Even if she felt really crappy about it afterward.

But that was yesterday. This was a new day, she thought as she put the pot of coffee on, pulled a bottle of caramel apple creamer out of the refrigerator, and popped a toaster strudel into the oven. Today she was going to start to figure this out.

It was going to be okay.

When her breakfast was ready, she sat down with it at the kitchen table and opened up her laptop to start typing up some notes on some of the issues that had come up in the budget meetings so she could figure out which department’s spreadsheets she should tackle first. But first, she logged into her e-mail account, knowing she’d find a message from her pen pal there. He’d started to become pretty predictable that way, in a way that was really comforting.

And since she’d written to him when she'd been upset last night, she was even more certain there would be a response. He was good like that.

And there was:

_The room isn’t empty. Or at least …it doesn’t feel that way when I get a message from you, and I hope that it’s the same for you. If I was actually in the room, I would hug you, or give you space— whichever you needed—and either way, I’d probably make you a meal. My mom was a good cook, and she always said that everything seems better when you eat well. And I think she was right. Her cooking really helped me get through a difficult time in my life. Or maybe it was just knowing that she cared, but I still try to eat well just in case._

Leslie smiled at the idea of getting a hug from him, then frowned down at her strudel. Ann was always telling her that food that tasted good wasn’t the same thing as good food, and she wondered which way Nerd Boy meant it. Just to be on the safe side, maybe she should get some fruit—something sweet and nutritious. No peaches, though—supervillains like Greg Pikitis (and probably Ben Wyatt) ate peaches.

_I think I know what you mean. Except, it’s not so much that anyone brings out the worst in me, it’s just that they see the worst, or assume the worst. I have to admit, I don’t help myself much. I’ve been told that I lack people skills, and that’s probably putting it too mildly. But I like talking to you, because I feel like even though we haven’t met, you know the real me. I’m Nerd Boy on the inside, and most of the people I meet in real life don’t see it._

_I can tell you’re a kind person. In fact, even though I’ve only known you for a short time, I feel like you’re one of the most caring people I’ve ever known. Whoever this person is who is troubling you, I can’t imagine he doesn’t see that about you. And if he doesn’t—well, then he’s not worth worrying about. I hope you don’t let him ruin another day. You deserve better._

_NB_

Leslie read the note a few more times, smiling over how sweet he was and how much better he made her feel. He was right, she should probably try not to let Ben get to her so much. It didn’t matter what he thought of her or her department or her town; it mattered what was left after he was gone. And that’s what she was going to focus her energies on.

Once she had the copies in hand, she spent the rest of the week holed up in her office, poring over the spreadsheets from early each morning to late into the night, except for when the task force was in session.

Outside the meetings, she managed to avoid Ben mostly, except for a few times when she ran into him near the wallflower mural, where he seemed to be milling about in the hallway by the auditors’ office. She was proud of the way she managed to nod politely to him each time.

He always looked a little startled to see her, like he thought she was going to attack him or something.

Maybe he had reason to be afraid. Maybe he knew she was going to uncover something that would make him look bad.

At least, that was what she was hoping.

By Friday, Leslie had worked herself through half the spreadsheets and still hadn’t found quite what she was looking for. Disappointingly, most of the information looked identical to what Ben had been showing them on the projector, in those boring gray scale charts. Sure, there were line items that were debatable, but they were already being debated in the meetings. They were something, but they weren’t exactly the gotcha-magic-bullet-smoking-gun discovery she really, really wanted.

Despite her lack of progress,phone calls with Ann and messages from Nerd Boy continued to keep her spirits up. Beautiful Ann was always encouraging, and in spite of her odd hours and tendency to take on extra shifts at the hospital, always managed to make time to be a good friend. And Nerd Boy … everything he wrote to her made her smile and replenished her optimism.

Early Saturday morning, she started working her way through the sewage department’s information, not feeling too optimistic about finding anything there. As creepy as Joe was, he ran a tight ship. And there wasn’t much that was debatable about sewage—people did things, and they needed to be taken care of, and nobody really wanted to mess with that process, including Leslie.

Halfway through the morning’s second cup of coffee, she flipped to the final spreadsheet in that section of her binder. Joe’s department’s information stopped halfway down the page, and then there was some white space, and a narrow grid at the bottom that appeared to belong to some other department. Except there was no header indicating who it belonged to. A line item simply labeled “discretionary” was allotted $35,000.

_Discretionary._

Suddenly Leslie felt like she knew what Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski must have experienced when he finally was able to listen to the June 23, 1972, tape of President Nixon discussing a coverup with his chief of staff.

Smoking gun, indeed, she thought gleefully, thinking of all the incredibly valuable things she could think of for her department to do with $35,000. It was going to be the difference between maintenance mode and making a difference mode.

Except that it was Saturday morning, and she wasn’t going to be able to confront Ben with the evidence until Monday. He was reliably one of the first to arrive at City Hall—always between 8:01 and 8: 04 a.m., so predictable—but that still was almost two full days away. There was no way she could contain her excitement that long.

Reaching for her laptop, she decided to reach out to the person she was most eager to share the news with.

_I had a breakthrough! I’m not positive yet, but I think I may have found a way to fix some of the problems I’ve been having at work. If everything works out the way it should, good things are going to happen. I’m so happy right now, I couldn’t wait to tell you. Are you awake?_

_PL_

After hitting send, she started flipping through the other tabs, making sure she hadn’t missed mysterious lines at the end of other departments’ sections. She didn’t see any, but $35,000 seemed like plenty to reinstate the youth athletics, senior center programs, community—

A little bell sound from her computer startled her, interrupting her train of thought. Glancing back at her laptop, she was surprised to already have a response from Nerd Boy.

_Yes, I’m awake—just got back from a nice walk and was thinking of you. The sun was shining, and, well, that always makes me think of you._

_That’s great news! I know how much your work situation has been weighing on you this summer. How are you going to celebrate this breakthrough?_

_NB_

That was a good question. She’d been working so hard this week, she kind of just wanted to sit back and catch her breath.

_Some red wine and CSPAN maybe? Any suggestions?_

_PL_

Leslie tapped her fingers on her kitchen table, smiling, waiting to see if he’d write her back that quickly again. A few moments later a new message popped up:

_CSPAN—wow. Don’t go too crazy! I’m kidding. I would never mock someone for watching CSPAN. Big fan of CSPAN. Although it is a Saturday, and I’m not sure Congress is debating this weekend. Might I suggest something on the History Channel instead? There’s a really interesting looking documentary, “How the States Got Their Shapes,” on this afternoon. The tagline was something like,“Every line on the US map tells a great story.” Well, I thought it sounded interesting. Is that just me?_

_NB_

Giggling, she typed back to him:

_No, it’s not just you! I love History Channel documentaries, and I haven’t seen that one yet. I always wondered why Wyoming is basically a box, while West Virginia looks like someone spilled a milkshake. If you’re watching it too, we should watch it together! There’s a messaging component on Hoosier Mate. Do you want to meet up there later?_

_PL_

His reply took longer this time, and as the minutes ticked by she started to wonder if she had completely misread the situation and he was out there somewhere trying to figure out how to let her down easy. It was just a documentary, though. What was the big deal?

Except that it kind of felt like a big deal, now that she had put it out there.

Finally her computer dinged, snapping her out of her momentary freakout.

_That sounds good. Meet you online at 2?_

Relieved, she wrote back:

_It’s a date!_

Then she reached for her phone to call Ann for some help figuring out what to wear. How would Nancy Pelosi dress for a situation like this? Something put-together but comfortable, something that said both I’m an awesome lady and I’m super excited about geography. She remembered that Nerd Boy liked globes. Or at least she thought he did—had that been one of the details on his profile that was true? Since he was the one to suggest this particular documentary, it seemed like it was probably true ... Maybe Ann had a T-shirt featuring a map.

Leslie caught herself, remembering that he wouldn’t actually be able to see her.

Maybe it was better this way, she thought after a moment. She could tell him she was wearing anything she wanted.

But she put the phone down, suddenly thinking maybe this was not something Ann would understand.

\--

Monday morning, Ben woke up in a great mood. He’d pretty much spent the entire weekend (except for a few breaks to sleep and eat) sipping red wine and watching History Channel documentaries while chatting with Pawnee Lover online, and he had that giddy feeling of when you first start dating someone and it seems really promising. She was so easy to talk to, and into the same things he was into, and she had interesting things to say, and she was really sweet and funny. It had been years since he’d spent time with someone who made him feel this way. And maybe it wasn’t a real date, or the beginning of a real relationship, but he had a feeling that she might really like him too. There had definitely been moments when it seemed like she might be flirting with him.

At one point, she’d asked him what he was wearing, and he had felt too silly to confess he had on one his nicer dress shirts and slacks because he’d wanted to look nice for her, even though they weren’t seeing each other in person. Instead he’d lied that he had on a Hillary Clinton campaign T-shirt from the 2008 primary season, because he thought she’d be into that, and it seemed like a more plausible clothing option for sitting around his motel room and watching television.

Then she had told him she was wearing a shirt with a topographical map of the United States across her “chestal region,” and he wondered if she was making that up for his benefit, or if she really had a shirt like that. Either way … it was pretty adorable. (And now he couldn’t seem to get the idea of her chestal region out of his head, even as he was headed into work.)

As Ben approached Pioneer Hall, he noticed Leslie Knope sitting on the front steps, looking intently at something in that binder she’d been going through for the past week. Then she looked up and smiled at him, and he smiled back at her because he was in a good mood, and she hadn’t bothered him much lately, and if she was still studying those spreadsheets, maybe she was coming around to seeing his position. Maybe even his work life was starting to look up.

Then she snapped her binder shut and jumped up to follow him inside. “Ben! You’re early.”

Glancing at his watch, he noticed it was 7:59, and yeah, he’d probably moved a little faster this morning because of that giddy feeling. But just a little faster, and it was weird that she’d notice a two-minute difference in his arrival time, and the suggestion that she might be tracking his movements that closely made him nervous.

“Not that early,” he mumbled, hurrying into the building.

Ben turned toward the stairs that led up to the second floor, thinking this was where she’d break away from him to go to her own office in the parks department, since the task force wasn’t reconvening until 9:30. Instead she followed him into the stairwell, and he didn’t really want her to follow him, so he turned around to face her, warily.

He was in a good mood, and he had a bad feeling that she was about to screw that up for him.

“Do you need something?”

“Yes! I want to set up a meeting. As soon as possible. Now, if that works for you. I have so much to talk to you about.”

She started to open up her binder, and he had the panicky urge to reach past her and make sure the door into the stairwell hadn’t just locked behind them, trapping him indefinitely in a one-on-one impromptu meeting with Leslie Knope. He knew for a fact there was nothing in that binder that changed the outlook for her department, but for some reason she looked so eager and hopeful, which could only mean she was about to suggest something absurd and impossible. He’d be forced to say no to whatever it was, she’d be upset, he’d feel awful, and he’d be stuck here with her for who knows how long until someone else found them. Chris and his assistant didn’t arrive until 8:30 usually, and the rest of the task force members didn’t need to be there until 9:30, and what if they used the other staircase?

As Leslie thumbed excitedly through some spreadsheets, apparently looking for whatever it was she wanted to show him, he tried to subtly reach past her to jiggle the door knob. Just to make sure.

It hadn’t locked. Not that that had ever happened to him before. But thank god.

“What are you doing?” Leslie was looking at him really oddly, and suddenly he realized how closely he’d leaned in toward her to touch the door knob, and as he snapped his hand back self-consciously, it just happened to brush up against her hair, which was really soft.

And suddenly he was conscious of being in an enclosed space with Leslie Knope for entirely different reasons. But that didn’t make any sense. There was nothing sexual about the tension between them, he was sure, so it must be just leftover energy from the weekend he’d just had, the fact that he’d spent days wanting to reach out and touch someone who wasn’t there. And now someone was there, even if it wasn’t the right someone. And that must be all it was.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. “Um … nothing. I thought I forgot something in my car, so I was going to go back. But it’s okay, I didn’t. I mean, I have everything … I need. So.”

God, he must be the most awkward human being alive. He wished Leslie of all people didn’t have to see him like this. It’s called people skills. You should get some, he remembered her saying. Yeah, he wished it was that easy. Did they sell those at JJ’s along with the waffles? He didn’t think so.

After staring at him for another moment, she returned her attention to the binder, holding it up toward him and running her finger down the page to show him something.

“Um … do you mind if we do this up in my office?” he suggested. Since the door hadn’t mysteriously locked behind them, it really didn’t make any sense to be conducting business in a stairwell. “You could even contact Chris’s assistant and set an actual meeting if you want.” Silently, he willed her to set up the meeting with Chris instead. Dealing with people like Leslie—that was supposed to be Chris’s department. And if she wanted a people person—

She looked crestfallen for a beat, then quickly recovered. “Let’s just do this now. I know we only have”—she glanced at her watch—“87 minutes until the task force meets, but if we don’t get through everything, we can pick it up at lunchtime. Yeah, let’s just do it now. In your office.”

Whatever she wanted to talk to him about might take more than 87 minutes? Um, wow. There went his good day. Ben sighed resignedly, ruffled his hair (which he’d spent too much time on this morning, for reasons he realized didn’t make any sense), and went upstairs, knowing she’d follow him.

In his office, he took a seat at his desk, and she sat down across from him, her eyes focusing for a moment on something over his shoulder, a few disparate emotions flashing across her features before quickly settling into a more pleasant businesslike expression. He glanced behind him, curious what she had been looking at, but only saw the organizational chart for Pawnee’s government.

“Okay. So you wanted to talk to me.” Have convictions. Be friendly. He felt like Eleanor Roosevelt had become the angel sitting on his left shoulder lately, thanks to his online pen pal.

“Yes, I wanted to talk to you about this line item at the end of the sewage department’s section.”

She slid what appeared to be a copy of her copy of that page across the desk to him, which was completely unnecessary, because he practically had those spreadsheets memorized. “That’s not part of the sewage department’s budget,” he said without looking at it.

“No, I know that. I figured that out. It’s labeled discretionary.”

Right.

Uh-oh.

“Um, yeah, no, that’s … I mean, I knew about that. It’s supposed to be there.”

Her expression hardened slightly, and he figured she had maybe been giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he had merely overlooked that part of the budget, and he’d just pretty much admitted to actively keeping it from her. Which wasn’t exactly true. He just hadn’t volunteered the information, because it had nothing to do with her department.

“It’s labeled discretionary,” she pointed out, like a barely concealed accusation.

“Yep,” he simply agreed, not appreciating the tone of her voice.

“Well, whose discretion?” she demanded, becoming less and less successful at concealing her ire.

He took a deep breath, trying to keep his own voice even. “Honestly, it’s your government’s discretion. Whatever the City Council chooses to do with it. But I’m recommending that they don’t do anything with it, for now.”

From the look on her face, it looked like she thought he was doing this to her personally. Which was ridiculous, because one, she was one of dozens of department heads he had to deal with. And two, he was trying to do what was best for her city. So technically, they were on the same side.

“Why would you do that?” she finally choked out.

“Because … because …” _—stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs—_ “it’s the responsible thing to do. It’s a safety net. A rainy day fund. It’s some cushion built into the budget that will help ensure that your government doesn’t get itself into trouble again like this in the future.”

“This isn’t a rainy day?” For a moment her voice was more disbelieving and sad than angry, and he felt like a jerk for making her sound like that. None of this was her fault.

“Look, your mayor and your city council got you into a bad situation. I’m just trying to advise them on what’s necessary to get it back on track. But it’s still a pretty dire situation. What if I leave, and some unexpected expense comes up, something really necessary. Like … a sewer line that breaks, or an unusually bad winter where the snow plows have to run more than usual. That’s what a rainy day fund is for.”

Leslie seemed to turn that over in her head a few moments, unhappily, then launched into her rebuttal. “You’re such a pessimist!” She spat out the word pessimist like it was a worse insult than jerk or asshole, and he wasn’t even—he was just more cautious than she was. “You don’t know that any of that is going to happen. In the meantime, that money is just sitting there, benefitting no one. I could be using it for valuable programs, for things that benefit real people. I have all of these ideas!”

She flipped to a section of her binder that looked much more colorful than anything that could have been copied from his own binder. He was kind of curious what was in there, even though it probably didn’t matter.

“Is there anything in that binder that would generate revenue?” he asked on the off chance he was wrong.

From the look on her face, he could tell he hadn’t been. “Not everything worth doing brings in revenue,” she retorted.

“I’m sorry, Leslie. If I gave you the money, that’s it. It would be gone. It would be irresponsible of me to do that. Now if you don’t mind … I actually have some notes I need to review before the task force meeting. Okay?”

Her face got all scrunched up as she considered this. Finally she pushed her chair back and stood up, sucking in a ragged breath. “When do you want to finish this meeting? The task force adjourns at 4:30. Does 5 or 6 work for you?”

He was kind of stunned that she wasn’t just going to let this drop. Did she never give up? “Um … actually I sort of, ah, I have plans tonight.” Something about the look on her face, the disbelief over the fact that he might have something else going on in his life, that not everyone in the world hated his guts, made him add quietly, “A date.”

Even though that wasn’t exactly true. He had vague plans to stop by the grocery store, pick up some ingredients, make a nice dinner, and possibly offer to take it to Pawnee Lover, wherever she was. Although, to be honest, he probably wasn’t going to have the nerve to carry out the last part of that plan. But still.

“Are you wearing that?” Leslie asked, a derisive note in her voice.

Ben looked down at the green-and-orange checked shirt that he’d put on that morning because it was bright, and it seemed to fit his mood. His mood then, at least.

“What’s wrong with ...? Fine. You know what, next time I get dressed, I’ll call and get your opinion first.” If it made her feel better to insult him personally, so be it.

“I don’t care what you wear,” she snapped. And then she was gone, leaving him once again to try to figure out where he’d gone wrong with her.

\--

There was nothing like a meeting with Ben Wyatt to bring Leslie’s spirits crashing down. She’d had a lovely weekend, rejoicing over solving her budget problem and multitasking like she was Michelle Obama on Sweetums bars. She’d collected all of her best ideas into an attractive and compelling presentation, all while catching up on her documentary viewing and enjoying the company of a nice man who respected her and made her happy. (And who sounded really cute and supportive of female political candidates.)

She had been in such a good mood that she was even starting to picture a world where she could get along with Ben Wyatt, thinking that as soon as she showed him what she had found, and what she wanted to do with it, maybe they could finally work together on something instead of … one of them working really hard on something and the other one working really hard on ruining it.

But he hadn’t even wanted to hear her ideas. Not a single one of her ideas.

Just because they weren’t money makers—as if that was the only criterion by which to evaluate an idea. How did he know the parks department didn’t have a need as urgent as a broken sewer line? Which hadn’t even happened?

Honestly, you’d think a guy who wore shirts like that would be a little more open-minded, or that someone who saw everything in black and white would wear things that were more, well … black and white. It was like false advertising for him to wear so much color. Leslie hoped whatever woman, or man, he was inflicting his company on tonight didn’t get the wrong idea about him. She wished she knew the person, so she could warn them away.

But worst of all, she was back to square one. Maintenance mode. Which sounded an awful like phoning it in, or skating until retirement, or something just really unproductive, and she didn’t see how that was going to be good for Pawnee at all.

On her way home that evening, feeling the anger and frustration and sadness mingling together, she remembered something that Nerd Boy had said about eating well and on an impulse swung by the grocery store to buy some fruit.

Avoiding the peaches, which for all she knew could be the root of all evil, she picked out some pretty yellow bananas, delicious looking strawberries, and a couple kiwi because she liked saying the word kiwi.

_Kiwi._

See, she was feeling better already. Maybe she’d make a smoothie tonight, if she could remember where she kept her blender. Wait, did she have a blender?

As she took a step back away from the kiwi display, she crashed into someone directly behind her. “Oh! Sorry …” she exclaimed as she was turning around to make sure the other person was all right.

“Excuse me! God, I’m such a klutz sometimes …” said a familiar voice, and when she turned around, sure enough, it was Ben Wyatt.

Just when she was starting to feel better, too.

“Oh. You,” she greeted him, the words coming out in short, clipped syllables because he made her so uncomfortable.

“Yeah. Me,” he said flatly, looking at her like she was the last person he wanted to see. As if she was the one who destroyed his day. Week. Entire year, probably.

“You should really watch where you’re going,” she said. 

“ _I_ should …?” For a moment, this seemed to infuriate him, but then he shook his head in that dismissive way he had. “Yeah, okay. Well, I apologized. Hope bumping into me didn’t ruin your evening.”

He was wearing a different shirt, a pale gray pinstripe, and for the briefest moment she wondered if her opinion had actually mattered to him on something. In the next instant she noticed the contents of his basket—carrots, celery, and onions—and went right back to feeling sorry for his date. Blech.

“I’m making soup,” he said, with a note of defensiveness.

Leslie couldn’t help but make a face. “Right. Well you enjoy your … soup.”

They started to turn away from each other again.

“Of course you don’t like vegetables,” Ben muttered as he moved away from her, but loud enough that she heard it.

At that Leslie whirled around again. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means … it means …” He was half turned away from her still, but she could see the flickers of indecision pass across the left side of his face, and she was half sure he was going to try to bring in Chris somehow to smooth things over instead of just telling her what he really thought for once. But then something shifted suddenly, and he was facing toward her, leaning in and talking and gesturing with more fervor than she’d ever seen him use. Which was kind of absurd, considering they were talking about produce, supposedly.

“It means, I’ve seen how much whipped cream you put on your coffee, and I’ve seen how many styrofoam boxes of waffles end up in the parks department. You think you can live on sugar and puppies and rainbows, but your teeth are going to rot, and you’re going to spend your life fighting cold viruses, and, it’s just, it’s just, it’s not a sustainable way to live!”

She stared at him agape, fixating on something from the middle that she knew was inane. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t eat puppies. You eat puppies!”

He shook his head at her. “What?”

“I don’t know. You said it.”

“I’m just saying … vegetables are responsible,” he said in a more measured voice. “Responsible people eat vegetables because it’s good for them in the long run.”

It was pretty much everything she’d ever feared he thought of her, and it hurt more than she wanted it to. “And you don’t think I’m responsible?”

“I think you’re … well, I think you’re a person who doesn’t like to eat her vegetables,” he said more quietly.

Glaring at him, Leslie deliberately started picking up vegetables, whatever was closest, and putting them in her basket. Something she suspected was an artichoke. Beets. Some leafy green stuff she didn’t recognize.

“I eat my vegetables,” she said through gritted teeth. “You don’t know me.”

“Oh yeah, I see that,” he said skeptically. “What on earth are you making?”

“It’s none of your business!” she declared and stalked off.

Honestly, she had no idea.


	4. Chapter 4

The moment Ben stepped out into the courtyard at Pioneer Hall, he saw Leslie Knope and stopped short, wondering if it was too late to turn around. But she’d spotted him already, and that would look weird.

Also, he was supposed to be walking with Chris to a meeting with the city planners. So, no, that would definitely be weird to suddenly turn around.

Unfortunately, while he was hesitating, Chris had also noticed Leslie and started making a cheerful beeline straight toward her. Reluctantly, Ben trailed behind, feeling like one of those toy puppies being tugged along on a red string, like the one he’d gotten his nephew for Christmas last year.

“Oh, no,” he overheard Leslie say to someone. “Incoming.”

Belatedly, Ben realized she wasn’t alone. There was a brunette woman at the table, someone who looked vaguely familiar.

“Leslie Knope! And the lovely Ann Perkins!” Chris greeted them. “How are you doing on this resplendent midsummer afternoon?”

Ben nodded awkwardly at Leslie, trying to muster a smile, but she ignored him, instead looking directly at his partner.

“Not very good, Chris. My department is in shambles. Shambles.”

Well, that was putting it a bit dramatically, Ben thought. Seriously, she hadn’t lost a single fulltime employee.

“I know, it’s terrible.” Chris tsk-tsked sympathetically. “Ben, is there anything we can do about that?”

“No,” Ben answered immediately, annoyed at having to remind Chris of something he very well knew.

Chris shrugged, once again happy not to take the blame. “Ben says no. Sorry about that. Ann, could I have a moment of your time?”

Before he knew what was happening, Chris had stepped away, leaving him alone with Leslie. Ben stared after him for a moment, realized his mouth was hanging open, closed it, and reluctantly turned back.

“So … how’s it going?” he asked tentatively, looking down at the padfolio he was clutching against his stomach like a shield.

Should he apologize to her? Maybe he should apologize. He had kind of gone off on her in a grocery store, and he did feel bad about that. Really bad.

Then again, he also felt bad about the fact that she’d made him feel so awful that day, he had totally lost confidence in himself, and in his cooking abilities, and hadn’t been able to follow through with his plan to offer to make dinner for his online pen pal. He’d ended up eating his soup on a bench that night. Alone.

Leslie didn’t look very receptive to an apology anyway, and he was getting so tired of defending himself to her.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she responded to his halfhearted attempt at small talk. “I’m not falling for that.”

“Okay, I was just trying to … ” He started backing away.

“Go!”

“Go, apparently, okay,” he mumbled, turning away from her.

Luckily Chris came back just then, and they were able to finish their journey across the courtyard before Leslie called in the bouncer to physically throw him out. Not that City Hall had a bouncer. But he imagined Leslie had people who would do that sort of thing for her.

“She likes me,” Chris non-sequitured once they were inside. “She just doesn’t know it yet.”

“Who?”

“The beautiful and charming Ann Perkins!”

“Oh.” Somehow Ben kept forgetting that Ann was a person.

Chris stopped in the hallway outside the planners’ office, leaning in enough that Ben was forced to lean backward slightly, and pointed his fingers enthusiastically at Ben’s face.

“Don’t worry, I won’t be discouraged. My motto is, ‘If at first you do not succeed, try again, and you are absolutely guaranteed to eventually succeed.’ It applies to dating, as well as every other possible situation in life. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Great,” Ben muttered, feeling a wave of sympathy for this Ann person.

Inside the room, Chris started making small talk with the city planners, telling them how valuable their work was to the city, et cetera, et cetera. Ben got out his Blackberry to kill a few minutes until his partner had everyone in the room feeling like best friends so they could all sing a round of camp songs before discussing the plans for the crosswalk by the library.

He had two new messages, the first from his sister with the subject line “Adventures in Verb Tense.” It contained an amusing list of appallingly constructed sentences his 3-year-old nephew had uttered.

The other one was from Pawnee Lover. It was a short inquiry about what he was wearing, followed by a description of what she had on, which sounded suspiciously similar to what last night’s newscast had shown Hillary Clinton wearing on her latest trip to the Middle East.

Did she really have the same pantsuit as Hillary Clinton, or was she trying to impress him? Either way, he thought it sounded an awful lot like flirting—terribly endearing flirting.

Maybe he should ask her out. He could take her somewhere, or cook her something other than soup. Not everyone liked soup, apparently.

Frowning, Ben put away his Blackberry and refocused on the meeting.

Who was he kidding? He probably needed something like four more direct confirmations that she liked him in that way before he’d ever get up the nerve to meet her.

And he wasn’t going to be in Pawnee much longer anyway.

\--

Leslie watched Ben until he was all the way out of the courtyard. Then she kept watching him, through the windows, until he disappeared from sight, in the direction of the city planners' offices. She just needed to make sure he was really gone and that he wasn’t going to jump out from the shadows or something and ruin the perfectly lovely lunch she was trying to have with her best friend.

When she was sure, she turned back to Ann, who looked slightly puzzled as she followed Leslie’s gaze. But Leslie didn’t want to talk about Ben, so she quickly changed the subject.

“So … what’s the scoop? Did Chris ask you out again?”

“Yeah, he did. I said no. I’m just too … and he would be … it’s not a good time. Right?”

“That’s probably best,” Leslie agreed, nodding sympathetically. It had been just two months since Ann had broken up with Mark, and Ann didn’t even seem to be able to form complete sentences about the situation yet.

“Are you sure? He’s really hot. No, you’re right. I shouldn’t do it.” Ann visibly shook the thought out of her head before changing the subject. “So what’s going on with you and that Ben guy?”

Leslie swallowed, for no apparent reason that she could think of, other than the fact that’s what people do with their throat parts. “What do you mean, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know, you were staring at him earlier, and it seems like there’s some kind of tension there. I’m picking up this vibe, like you’re totally going to chase him down and kick him in the shins at recess or something.”

Leslie almost choked on her chocolate milk. “What? No, Ann, that’s … ugh.” Come to think of it, she kind of did want to kick Ben in the shins, but not for the reasons Ann was suggesting. “Of course there’s tension! He’s out to destroy my department. He hates everything I love. He’s a horrible person.”

Ann casually took another bite of her salad, not nearly as perturbed as she should be about Ben’s existence. “Are you sure? He’s just doing his job, isn’t he?”

Leslie realized she had been so caught up in fighting for her department and writing to her online pen pal, she had been neglecting to keep Ann adequately informed. Exasperated, she tried to explain. “You should have heard him the other night. He almost ran over me in the produce department at Kroger’s.”

Ann shook her head, brow furrowed. “Wait. You bumped into each other in the produce aisle?”

Leslie didn’t see why she was having to repeat that detail. Was she stuttering? “Yeah. At Kroger’s.”

Ann looked like she was trying to suppress a smile. “Just … nothing. It’s nothing. Go on. What did he say?”

“And … and … he said people should eat their vegetables, because they’re nutritious. Or something like that. It was awful.”

Ann gestured meaningfully to her medical scrubs, then looked from her own salad to the pile of whipped cream Leslie was spooning from her fruit salad. “I love you, Leslie, but I think I have to side with Ben on the vegetables. You should probably be eating more of them, don’t you think?”

“What? No, Ann. I mean, yes, you’re probably right, but the way he said it … he was very judgmental.”

“Okay. I’m not following, though. Why does he care about your nutrition?”

“He doesn’t.” Leslie didn’t know how to explain it without getting into how Ben thought she was irresponsible, and how he had no faith in her department, and she didn’t want to think about that, and anyway, she didn’t know why it mattered what he thought. “He was just being obnoxious and condescending, like a … condescending turtle face.”

“Got it.” Ann looked less than convinced, but Leslie let it go. Sometimes Ann, beautiful and amazing as she was, could be really naïve about things. “I should probably get going. I have some errands to run before my shift starts.”

“Yeah. Oh, oh, wait, Ann! Don’t leave yet. Don’t go anywhere.”

“I’m not going anywhere. What is it?”

Leslie rooted around in her bag, shifting around folders and binders and notepads. She knew it was in here somewhere, she had just seen it, it was probably … there! “Here! You have to read this book. Nerd Boy recommended it to me, and it was sooo good. I know you don’t usually like the history books I give you, but this one’s different. It’s about food, and everyone likes food. You’ll love it, trust me. Promise me, you'll give it a chance?”

Ann dutifully accepted the copy of _The American Foodies: How Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin Revolutionized American Cuisine_ , and eyed the cover doubtfully.

“Who did you say recommended this to you?”

“It was …”

_Crap._

Now she understood why Ann was looking at her weirdly.

_Oh boy._

“It was … someone who knows things about books, who recommends books. At the library. A librarian! Yes, it was a librarian.”

“You don’t go to the library.” Ann flipped over the book, noting the lack of a bar code. “And this isn’t a library copy.”

Double crap. “Right! A librarian who works at the bookstore. I misspoke.” Why hadn’t she just said bookstore employee? Triple crap.

“Leslie, what’s going on?”

How was she supposed to stand up to that kind of pressure?

“Fine. He’s not a librarian.” At least, she hoped he wasn’t. She still didn’t know what Nerd Boy did for a living. “He’ssomeoneImetonthedatingsite.” She ran the words together, barely moving her mouth.

Ann clapped her hands, dropping the book in her delight. “That’s so great. Leslie, you’re dating someone! Why didn’t you tell me? I need details. Spill it! What did you say his name was? Nubai? What nationality is that?”

Leslie was thrown for a second that Ann had misheard what she called him, then latched onto it. “Alban … kuwa… zakstanian?” What? She had no idea where Nerd Boy was from, but she was pretty sure he was from an actual country, probably this one, considering his vast interest in US history.

“You don’t know?” Ann asked incredulously.

“Fine! He’s not … whatever I just said. His name isn’t Nubai. It’s … Nerd Boy.” Leslie practically whispered it, looking at the ground.

A beat passed. Then another. “Nerd … Boy?”

“It’s not his real name!” Leslie threw her hands up defensively. She had known Ann wasn’t going to understand this. “It’s a user name. We’ve been writing to each other all summer, a lot, and I really like him, really really like him, but we haven’t met, and we’re probably never going to, the end.”

There. Okay. It was out there. Leslie took a deep breath, while Ann stared at her.

“You know how crazy that sounds.”

“Yeah. It sounded that way, when I said it, just now, out loud.”

“Okay … so … if you like this guy, why haven’t you met him? You know how dating sites are supposed to work, right?”

Leslie had been going back and forth on that. She had tried to hint heavily at one point that she was going to be at JJ’s eating waffles from 6:35 to 7:35 on a particular evening, hoping he’d stop by and, possibly, maybe grab a bite with her. But he’d sent her a really weird message about how great she was and how he was really enjoying writing to her—on the internet, online.

It seemed like the idea of meeting in person made him uncomfortable, and she’d convinced herself all over again it was probably better this way.

“He’s only in Pawnee for the summer, on business or something,” she told Ann. “It was my idea to keep things impersonal. I don’t know, it made sense at the time. I didn’t want to get too attached … he’s going to leave, and it would be Dave, all over again.”

“How could it be Dave all over again? You haven’t even met him. He could be anybody. He could be like weird MRI guy or Jean-Ralphio or”—Ann shuddered—“Tom.”

“Tom’s not that bad. But no, he’s not … he’s really … I just have a feeling, this one’s different.”

“I don’t get it, if you haven’t met him. What is it about this guy?”

Leslie didn’t even know where to begin. “There are things you can tell from his e-mails. He’s sweet. He makes me laugh. He cares about things that I care about. He appreciates nice towels and he likes to take long morning walks and he knows all the state capitals. We get each other.”

Ann was continuing to give her a skeptical look. “He sounds great.”

“He is,” Leslie said dreamily, getting swept away for a moment in the thought of him.

“Leslie.” Ann’s stern voice broke into her reverie. “You have to meet him.”

Now, see, this—this was exactly what Leslie had been afraid of. Maybe she should have stuck to pretending she had a boyfriend named Nubai.

“Are you sure? That’s crazy. Why would I? I don’t know, Ann. Maybe it’s better this way. We can keep writing to each other no matter where he is, and I never have to give that up.”

“Yes. I’m sure about this. If you don’t, you could spend all this time pining for someone who’s probably not who you think he is. And if he is … I don’t know. Maybe you could make it work. But you have to find out.”

Leslie sighed. She did really want to meet him, find out his name, see how handsome he was (she was so sure he’d be so handsome, like an old film star probably). And maybe make out with him a little on his face …

“Okay. Yeah. Maybe.”

“Leslie.” Ann had this way of saying a person’s name that was really persuasive. It probably came from being a nurse.

“Okay! I’ll do it.”

“Good.”

“You’re going to come with me, right? Just in case?”

“Of course I will come with you,” Ann said, smiling encouragingly as she collected her things to leave. “But it’s going to be fine either way.”

It was going to be fine, Leslie repeated to herself. “Thanks, Ann, you’re such a good friend.”

Halfway through the door Ann paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Nerd Boy?”

Leslie glared at her, then as soon as she was gone, logged on to check her messages. She smiled when she saw that Nerd Boy had written back to her already.

_What am I wearing? Well, I’ll tell you, I wish I was dressed like a Jedi Knight, because I’m having one of those days where I feel like I need something more protective than business casual. Not that Jedi Knights wear armor; their powers are more spiritual. Maybe a Batman suit? That’s it, actually. That’s exactly what I want to be wearing today. You should picture me as Batman. And I’ll picture you as Wonder Woman, bringing peace to the Middle East in an elegant power suit._

_NB_

Leslie laughed at the image, realizing happily that he’d seen through her bit of flirting and had been watching the same news report as she was last night. She wrote him a short encouraging message telling him that the most protective thing he could wear was a smile, sent it, and then started to think about how she was going to word her next message.

No hinting this time. Ann was right. She was going to ask him to meet her for real.

\--

Ben Wyatt was standing in an alley, listening to the sound of his heartbeat and willing it to slow down, berating himself for leaving his motel twenty minutes early when he knew it would only take him five minutes to get to the restaurant.

He guessed he could go in. But then he’d have to be on constant alert, ready for her to walk in at any moment, and that sounded too intense. What if she startled him, and he spilled coffee all over his shirt? Not that he’d necessarily be drinking coffee, he could just be sitting there, but what would he be doing with his hands? Suddenly they looked comically large, and he couldn’t think of what he usually did with them all the time.

No, it was better this way. He’d just casually wait here out of sight. And he’d let her get there first, then walk in just after 7, casually. He’d have more control over the situation that way.

Anyway, she was the one who was supposed to bring a book so he’d be able to recognize her. So this made sense. Loitering in an alley totally made sense. There was nothing creepy about being a guy she met on the internet who was now loitering in an alley waiting for her.

Shit. What was wrong with him?

It’s not like he hadn’t been on first dates before. He’d been on lots of first dates (although not many second dates).

He just hadn’t been on a first date where he was already this emotionally invested in the outcome. And he was. He hadn’t even met her, and he already felt like … this could be something. It had to be something, or else … would she still write to him if they didn’t hit it off tonight?

So it seemed really important that the woman he still knew only as Pawnee Lover like him, the real him, the awkward skinny dork who most people seemed to find … unlikable.

Oh god. What if she didn’t like him?

Ben pulled out his phone to look at her last message one last time before steeling himself to go in.

_I’ll be the woman with blonde hair and a copy of The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. If you see more than one woman who fits that description, ask J.J. to point out his favorite customer, and that’ll be me. Don’t tell me what you look like—I feel like I’ve come to know you so well, there’s no way I wouldn’t recognize you on sight._

_PL_

Blonde hair. It was the only thing he knew about her appearance, but he really liked the idea of it. He didn’t even usually go for blondes, but for her to have bright yellow hair, like the sunlight that reminded him so much of her personality… it was exactly how he would have pictured her.

He wondered briefly how she pictured him, how he’d measure up against her idea of him. But time was up. Snapping his phone shut and straightening his tie, he turned the corner and walked into JJ’s.

It took him a moment to become acclimated to the indoor light and get his bearings.

“Can I help you, son?”

Ben snapped his gaze to the man behind the counter, a portly middle-aged guy who he guessed was J.J. The older man was eying him warily, a look Ben had seen in business establishments in small towns and cities all across Indiana. It was the way people looked at an outsider.

He swallowed hard.

“I’m just … looking for someone. Someone I’m supposed to meet, to … just … I’ll just look around, if that’s okay.”

“Feel free to order something off the menu.” J.J. looked like he thought Ben was just there to case the place, or steal the restroom key, or something.

“Of course,” Ben said softly, scanning the restaurant.

There. At a booth toward the back, a woman with blonde hair. But she was turned around talking to someone in the booth behind her, so he couldn’t see her face.

After taking a deep, useless breath, he started to walk the length of the restaurant toward her, mentally practicing his introduction. Hi, I’m Mr. Ben Wyatt. I’m Ben. Nerd Boy. I’m a huge nerd, you must be …

When he was a few feet from her table, the woman turned around, flicked her eyes toward the door, then landed on him. Every feature on her face hardened, and he stopped short.

It wasn’t his date. It was Leslie Knope, and she looked as startled to see him as he was to see her.

“Yes?”

“Oh, um …” Disoriented and embarrassed, Ben started scanning the room for someone else with blonde hair. “I was just … um …”

Where was she? He didn’t see anyone else who fit that description. Was there a doorway somewhere to another section of the café?

“‘Um’ is the sound in dumb,” Leslie said, but in this weird voice like she was doing an impression of someone insulting him and not actually insulting him. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s a little harsh, Leslie,” someone else said, and Ben noticed the person sitting in the next booth. It was that woman Ann, the one Chris liked. Ben momentarily wondered why she and Leslie weren’t sitting together, but he was a little preoccupied at the moment to care.

“Let me handle this, Ann,” Leslie answered. “You don’t know who we’re dealing with.”

Ben finished his third complete scan of the restaurant. No doorway. No other blonde. Maybe she was late. He just needed to get away from Leslie, before she gave him a total crisis of confidence again, and go wait by the …

As soon as he turned back to the table to excuse himself, his eyes landed on the book that was sitting next to Leslie's purse.

_The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt._

His mind emptied of whatever words he’d been about to say, and everything started to go a little bit fuzzy around the edges, until all he could see was that book. It was a nice copy, maybe a special edition, with a textured cover and glittery metallic lettering, and it looked like it was purchased by a person who really loved Eleanor Roosevelt. But that couldn’t be …

“Are you okay?” It was the other woman’s voice. He couldn’t remember her name again all the sudden, and her voice sounded really far away.

“Um … I was … I’m just going to … go this way … sorry,” Ben mumbled as he backed away from the table. He promptly backed into another table, rattling the silverware, then turned and fled for the door.

On the sidewalk outside, he doubled over, his hands on his knees, and tried to get the blood to drain back to his head.

It’s not like he had to ask J.J. to point out his best customer to him—it was obvious now; he’d seen the takeout boxes in the task force meetings. Leslie bought a lot of waffles.

Pawnee Lover was Leslie. Leslie was Pawnee Lover.

Well, that settled one thing, he thought miserably. She didn’t like him. She hated him.

“Are you okay?”

Ben was startled to feel a gentle hand on his back and looked up to see the brunette woman. Ann. Her name was Ann.

She frowned at him in concern. “It’s okay, I’m a nurse. Do you need some kind of medical attention?”

“What? No, I’m …” Ben tried to shake it off and straighten up so he didn’t have to explain himself to this woman, who still had a finger on the keypad of her cell phone as if she was ready to call 911 if needed. Was he really that pathetic? “I’m okay, really. Thank you, though.”

She smiled sympathetically at him, and through all the white noise in his head at the moment, the thought crystallized that she seemed nice, and he should do a better job remembering her name.

“Is it Leslie?” she asked.

He widened his eyes at her, wondering what she knew, but she was still talking. “Don’t let her get to you. She’s waiting for a first date tonight, and she doesn’t do well with first dates. Really doesn’t do well. It’s making her tense. She’s not usually like that.”

Ben scoffed at the pavement. “She’s usually like that when I’m around.”

Ann looked at him oddly, and he felt like he might have just given something away, but he wasn’t sure what.

And he didn’t have a chance to figure it out, because Chris Traeger chose that moment to jog up.

“Ben Wyatt! Ann Perkins! Two of my absolute favorite people,” he greeted them in typical Traeger fashion, jogging in place. “Are you two together?”

The grin didn’t leave Chris’s face, but Ben noticed the flicker of doubt cross his partner’s eyes and realized how this might look. At least to Chris, who would see two near-strangers conversing on a sidewalk and assume they must be falling deeply and madly in love with each other.

“No. We’re not … at all. We were just …” Suddenly Ben had no idea how to explain what had just happened. He couldn’t even explain it to himself.

Luckily, Ann stepped in. “We were both at J.J.’s, Ben stepped out for some air, and I came out to see if he was all right.”

Chris extended a heavy hand to Ben’s left shoulder and looked him deeply in the eyes. “And are you all right?” he asked, with an extreme seriousness that struck Ben as almost comic, if he were in the mood for comedy just then.

“Great,” Ben answered flatly, flinching a little bit under the weight of Chris’s hand.

“Wonderful! I’ve just run 18 miles, and I could really use some fuel. Would you two mind if I joined you?”

“Oh, um, I think I’ll just … I’m not really …” Ben started to flounder for an excuse, at the same time as Ann was doing the opposite.

“Oh, okay, if you really want to, I mean, that’s probably okay, yeah,” she was saying, then appeared to catch herself. “Wait. I’m actually supposed to be backup for Leslie tonight. In case her date doesn’t show up or doesn’t live up to her insane expectations. Honestly, she’s probably going to be a mess later no matter what. Probably I should be there for her … so I shouldn’t …”

“Ann Perkins.” Chris looked at her like his heart was about to burst with affection. “What a truly wonderful friend you are. It’s an honor to just eat in the same restaurant as you.”

“Thank you.” Ann smiled up at him girlishly, her head cocked to one side, and Chris turned to Ben.

“I hear the waffles in this place are simply to die for, and I think we could get a table with the best view in town.” Chris winked at Ann. “What do you say, partner?”

“Um …” Ben glanced through the window. He could see Leslie across the restaurant, eyes flicking nervously between her book and the door, and wondered what kind of ‘insane expectations’ she had for this evening. Wondered what he could possibly do in this situation.

He could stand her up. He could tell her the truth. Either way seemed to guarantee that he’d lose his online pen pal. He wasn’t quite sure how sticking around would change that, but ….

He wasn’t quite ready to face the alternative either.

“Come on, you should eat something anyway,” Ann added, putting on her concerned-nurse face again.

“I guess I am a little curious about those waffles,” he mumbled, and let himself be ushered back into the enemy’s lair.

J.J. glared at Ben momentarily before noticing his present company and giving them a welcoming smile. Ann headed back to her booth next to Leslie’s, and Chris grabbed a nearby table, one with a direct view, as Ben wondered how he got away with this sort of thing without coming off as a total creep.

Leslie immediately turned away from them for a consultation with Ann, her blonde curls bouncing as she shifted, and Ben was riveted for a moment.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Chris commented.

When they had first met, Ben had noticed she was attractive, objectively speaking. All blue eyes and shiny curls and an aura of intelligence and passion. It was obvious to anyone who met her, and it didn’t necessarily mean he was attracted to her.

If Pawnee Lover looked like Leslie … and obviously Pawnee Lover did look like Leslie … oh god, he was so confused.

“And nursing is such a noble profession,” Chris was saying, and Ben realized he hadn’t been referring to Leslie anyway.

“Yeah, she seems nice,” he agreed distractedly.

J.J. showed up to take their order, and Chris ordered “waffles all around,” which Ben went along with. He usually would have gone for something more savory, but hardly had the interest in looking at a menu just then. His brain was working overtime to process the information that Leslie Knope, the woman who made him miserable every time they crossed paths, could be the same person who had written all those warm, compassionate, adorable messages to him this summer.

While he was pondering this, Ann wandered over to chat with Chris.

“How are things?” Chris asked her with intense concern.

Ann frowned compassionately, glancing back at Leslie, who was drumming her fingers on the table with increasing intensity while she watched the door. “It doesn’t look good. He’s twenty minutes late. I don’t think he’s going to show.”

“How is she taking it?” Ben asked, in what he hoped was the casual voice of a disinterested party.

“Not great. She had pretty high hopes for tonight.”

As Chris and Ann continued their conversation, Ben discreetly watched Leslie. She had stopped the manic finger drumming and was slumped over the book, her head snapping up every time the café door chimed. The hopefulness and vulnerability turned something over inside him, and from this distance, without her yelling at him, he could see it. What he’d been seeing all along but hadn’t really been paying attention to, because it tended to make his job more difficult to pay attention to people like Leslie.

Not that he'd ever met anyone quite like Leslie. She was this passionate person who loved her city. Someone who worked hard and cared about people and cared about doing the right thing. Someone who had high hopes to hang out with a guy named Nerd Boy tonight.

She was Pawnee Lover.

She just wasn’t that person with him.

“Would you excuse me?” Ben stood up from the table. “I have to … make a phone call … to my sister. It’s her birthday. I just remembered.”

“Tell Kate happy birthday for me! I should send her something,” Chris said brightly, then suddenly replaced his smile with a look of concern as he returned his attention to Ann. “And tell Leslie our hearts are with her tonight.”

In the near-privacy of the hallway next to the bathroom, Ben dialed information to get the number of J.J.’s and asked to be connected.

“Hi. I was wondering if you could do me a favor. There’s a woman there. A blonde … Leslie Knope. I’m supposed to meet her, but … I’ve, ah, well I’ve been detained. I won’t be able to make it after all. Could you let her know?”

“And you are?”

“Oh, um …” He couldn’t exactly give his name. And he wasn’t about to give J.J. his user name either. “She’ll know who it is. And …” Ben sighed, a quick exhale of breath that he tried to direct away from the receiver. “Tell her I’m really sorry.”

He walked back to the table in time to watch J.J. walk over and give Leslie the news. Leslie frowned and nodded as J.J. talked to her. After he left, she stared off into the distance for a few moments, looking thoughtful. Then she visibly put on her stiff upper lip, collected her things, and walked over to Ann, who was still hovering near Chris.

“Well, that’s that,” Leslie announced. “He called J.J. He’s been detained.”

Ann reached to put an arm around her. “Oh no. Detained by what?”

Leslie shrugged. “Didn’t say. I’m sure he’ll write to me later. At any rate, it looks like I won’t be meeting him tonight after all. You ready to go?”

“Oh, yeah, of course, um …” Ann looked between Chris and Leslie, obviously torn.

“Leslie, Ann, why don’t you join us?” Chris piped up. “The more the merrier!”

Leslie looked warily at Ben, then back to her very eager-looking friend, to the exit, then back to Ann. He watched the reluctance on her face shift to something else, something more generous. “I suppose … okay. I am hungry.”

As she started to put her things down next to him, Ben felt a wave of panic at going through with this. Maybe he should just go. She could eat the waffles that Chris had ordered for him, like some kind of consolation prize for her ruined night. It was the least he could do.

But just then J.J. inexplicably showed up at the table with four plates of waffles, pretty much putting him on the spot.

“What outstanding service this place has!” Chris observed.

“Only the best for my favorite customer,” J.J. said, carefully setting down the plates and casting a fond look at Leslie that prompted an unexpected spurt of jealousy in Ben’s gut. “I thought you might still want these.”

“I thought you didn’t like waffles,” Leslie said to Ben when J.J. had left.

“I never said that,” Ben mumbled apprehensively.

“You said they lack nutritional value,” Leslie pressed.

Ann glanced nervously between Leslie and Ben, but Chris seemed oblivious to the tension. “These waffles are fantastic. I don’t treat myself often, but even the healthiest diet has room to try a local delicacy,” he interjected. “It’s all about balance.”

Leslie nodded approvingly, Ann beamed at Chris, and Ben scooted the pile of whipped cream over to the side of his plate and took a bite. Of course he liked waffles. Who didn’t like waffles?

Chris turned his attention back to Leslie. “I don’t think you should let tonight get you down. You are brilliant and passionate and a very good friend to Ann. There will be plenty more first dates in your future. Just ask Ben! He’s been on more than anyone I know.”

After that cheerful overshare, Chris refocused his attention on Ann. “Tell me every single detail about your day. I want to know everything.”

Since it was clear their half of the table was no longer being included in that conversation, Ben cleared his throat and glanced nervously at Leslie.

She broke the silence first. “So you’ve been on a lot of first dates, then.”

“Chris sets me up a lot,” Ben admitted, shifting his napkin around in his lap. “Nothing much ever comes of it. I, uh … don’t … always … make the best first impression.”

“Who, you?” She laughed, short and quiet, and the teasing seemed surprisingly more gentle than mean.

“Yeah, I know,” Ben said, with his own quiet laugh. As much as he didn’t want to be talking about his horrendous dating history with her, it was probably the most relaxed moment they’d shared in a long time, so he continued, in a voice only Leslie could hear. “I’m uncomfortable meeting new people. I never know the right thing to say, or how to get to know them. It’s always just … painfully awkward. I wish I was better at it.”

She looked back at him, and for a moment their gazes locked, and he thought maybe … maybe … but she looked away quickly, and he felt the door closing again.

“You should try harder,” she said unsympathetically, opening her book and fanning out a set of cards that had been tucked inside the cover. He noticed what was written on the top few: Egyptian debt relief, ring-tailed lemurs, breakfast cereal. “Make an effort. That’s why I always come prepared with conversation topics.”

That got Ann’s attention again. “Leslie. I thought we talked about this. You promised you weren’t going to do that anymore.”

“No. No. I said you made good points, but I never promised. I still think a guy appreciates when you put some forethought and preparation into a date. The right guy would, at least. And this way, there are never any awkward silences!”

She glanced at Ben, and he couldn’t help but smile at her, because it was charming, in that same way he had always found Pawnee Lover charming. _Which made sense, because they were the same person. But she quickly swept the cards back up and snapped the book cover shut over them. Clearly they weren’t for him._

“What a simply delightful evening!” Chris declared as everyone finished scraping the whipped cream off their plates. “I’m overjoyed that the four of us had the chance to enjoy each other’s company over a delicious meal.”

“Yes. Too bad it’s almost over and we’ll all be parting ways for the evening,” Leslie said with a lack of sincerity that was lost on Chris. “I wish we could stay longer, but … Ann.”

“That’s a fantastic idea, Leslie,” Chris said, grinning over at Ann, who seemed to have missed Leslie’s pointed look. “There’s no reason to call it a night yet. Let’s take this date plus two other people into the stratosphere!”

Ann flashed him a pleasantly surprised smile, looking like she might actually really like Chris. Ben did his best to ignore the fact that the date was supposed to be him and Pawnee Lover … Leslie, apparently … and the two other people should have been … nobody. Nobody else should have been here tonight.

Ben watched Leslie’s face as she looked between Chris and Ann. Her grimace suddenly shifted into something else, and it wasn’t generosity this time. He could tell by the light that flashed in her eyes that the wheels were turning.

He recognized that look. It was the one she got every time she thought she had figured out how to get her way at work. Except this time it wasn’t directed at him. She was looking at …

“Great idea, Chris. I know just the place.”

_Oh no._

\--

If anyone could salvage a seemingly ruined evening, it was Leslie Knope.

So fine, tonight hadn’t worked out the way she had hoped. She wasn’t currently on her way out to have after-dinner drinks with Nerd Boy. They weren’t going to be gazing into each other’s eyes and talking late into the night, the notecards long forgotten because the conversation flowed so easily that they kept going, long after they’d worked out a plan to guarantee Egypt’s future economic stability and debated the merits of Trix versus Lucky Charms.

She’d been pretty sure they would have been in agreement that Trix were not just for kids. But Lucky Charms have marshmallows. So it could have gone either way.

And then there would have been a kiss on her doorstep. Probably kisses, plural. Maybe she would have invited him in. Probably not. But maybe. It’s not like it would have been a typical first date.

Except that it hadn’t been anything. So none of that had happened.

He probably had a good reason. Probably. Honestly, it was hard to think of anything that would have kept her away tonight, and so it hurt to think this hadn’t been as important to him.

Maybe that was it—he’d been hurt. Maybe he’d been detained at the hospital.

She’d have to ask Ann later to find out if any sweet, intelligent Eleanor Roosevelt fans had been admitted. She hoped that was it! Actually … no. She didn’t want him to be hurt. She just wanted him to be here. Or to have a really good reason for not being here.

Anyway, clearly he wasn’t. But it was nice to see Ann so happy with Chris, and Leslie had been willing to sit next to BentheJerk and play nice over breakfast-for-dinner as a favor to a friend, even though Ben’s favorite breakfast cereal was probably vegetables. Ugh. Also J.J. had remembered to give her extra whipped cream.

Leslie had hoped to excuse herself as soon as the waffles were gone, but when she’d realized how well Chris and Ann were hitting it off, she’d thought maybe …

Maybe that could be useful.

Ann was a beautiful woman, and men had been known to do generous things for very beautiful women before. Generous things like … recommend that the rainy-day fund be used to fund projects for her best friend’s department?

Okay, maybe it wasn’t the best idea Leslie had ever had. But she was running out of ideas, and out of time, and as long as they liked each other … she might as well let nature take its course. At least something good might come out of tonight.

So when Chris had wanted to keep the night going, she’d suggested going to The Bulge. The place where inhibitions seemed to shed faster than John Edwards’s fan base when he cheated on his sick wife.

Oh, John Edwards.

Inside The Bulge, Leslie used her status as a gay hero to snag some free drinks, ignoring Ben’s quizzical look because there’s no way someone like him would understand why penguin weddings were cute (Nerd Boy totally would have thought they were cute), then headed out to the dance floor.

“This place is outstanding!” Chris said when they were all getting into the music. “Great call, Leslie Knope. Look, even Ben’s dancing.”

Leslie thought that what Ben was doing could hardly be described that way—he was standing stiffly, barely bobbing his head, like the stick in the mud he was. But she was glad that Chris was having a good time, and the same generous nature that had called that dancing might benefit Leslie later.

Ben wandered away in the direction of the bar, apparently giving up creating a new dance craze based on being stiff and boring. Soon after, Leslie excused herself to give the lovebirds a little more time to connect before putting the rest of her plan into action.

Taking the stool next to him, because it was the last one left, she tried to swallow back the disappointment that this condescending life ruiner had pretty much ended up being her “date” for the evening. Plenty of things were Ben's fault, but Nerd Boy standing her up was not one of them.

As the bartender handed her a new drink, Ben looked up from whatever he had been rapidly keying into his cell phone.

“Oh, hey,” he greeted her, in too familiar of a voice, like they were suddenly friends or something.

“What is with you and that cell phone?” Seriously, he always had that thing. Like he was a 14-year-old girl with a texting addiction. But who could he possibly be texting?

He raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Now you have a problem with cell phones?”

She rolled her eyes. “I have a problem with people who’d rather hide in their electronics and their gadgets, rather than communicate face to face, and have actual conversations, with people around them, in person.”

Ignoring the slightly hurt, then startled, look on his face, she impulsively reached across the bar and grabbed the phone out of his hand. “Who are you always writing to anyway?” she blurted.

As she brought the screen up to her face, close enough so that she could see it in the dim light of the bar, the shocking thought flashed through her brain that she was going to see a message to Pawnee Lover. It was an insane idea, but he had shown up at J.J.’s at the exact moment that she’d been expecting Nerd Boy.

Her heart racing, she focused on the little screen.

Hey, _Kate,_

_Just wanted to warn you that you might be getting a birthday card or a singing telegram or something from Chris. It’s a long story. I’ll explain la_

Quickly, she handed the phone back to him, disappointed. Then she was immediately disgusted by her disappointment. She should be relieved. It was Ben, for crap’s sake. There was no way he could have been Nerd Boy.

He took the phone back from her, raising his eyebrows.

“So who’s Kate?” she asked, smiling sheepishly.

“My sister.”

“It’s her birthday?”

“Nope.”

“Why does Chris think it’s her birthday?”

Ben laughed, but not like he thought it was funny. He held up his phone pointedly. “It’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell you later.” He glanced down at the phone, brow furrowed, and shook his head slightly. “Or not,” he added quietly.

“I didn’t know you had a sister.” It seemed weird that Ben had a sister. It was like … finding out Greg Pikitis had a mom. Or that librarians had children. Of course even the worst people had families, but … weird, just the same.

“What, I’m not like an android or a … cyborg or something. There’s probably a lot we don’t about each other.”

Leslie supposed that was true. They weren’t exactly close. “I’m an only child,” she volunteered, for no reason at all.

“Now, see, that’s something I didn’t know.” He looked directly at her again, and she was struck by the gentle curiosity in his eyes, like he actually cared to find out something about her. It made her kind of curious about him. Anyway, she was stuck here with him, so she might as well make the most of it.

“Tell me something else I don’t know about you,” she said.

Ben’s eyes widened slightly in surprise and then he considered for a few long moments, as she waited in suspense. Suspense? No, she didn’t actually care what he was going to reveal.

“I’ve read that book,” he finally said, glancing away from her and shifting on his stool like he was embarrassed. “The biography, the one you had at the diner.”

“ _The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt?_ ” He nodded, but that was ridiculous. There was no way both Ben and Nerd Boy appreciated the same historical heroines she did. “No. I don’t believe you. What, does every guy secretly read Eleanor Roosevelt books? No way.”

Ben shot her a skeptical glare. “Yes. We all keep them under our mattresses with our Playboys.”

“Really?”

“No. I mean, I can’t speak for the rest of mankind, but I actually do admire her. I find her … she’s an inspiring person. And I really have read her book.”

He seemed genuine, but then he looked away from her again, and that made her doubt him again. It did seem highly implausible that someone like him would appreciate someone like her. Eleanor, she meant. “Prove it. Tell me something Eleanor Roosevelt said that inspired you.”

Ben looked startled for a moment, then thoughtful. His lips started to move slightly, like he was inwardly reciting Eleanor’s greatest hits and selecting just the right one. Leslie leaned toward him a little, but only because the music at the bar was so loud, and she wanted to hear this.

“She said … to do whatever, because people will criticize you no matter what. I … have found that to be true.”

Leslie bristled, leaning back on her stool again. “She didn’t say do _whatever_. She said _do what you feel in your heart to be right_.”

“Good lord. You’re going to take offense that I got a few of the words wrong? I don’t have the book in front of me.”

“No, I’m taking offense that someone like you can twist the words of Eleanor Roosevelt to justify your own … ugh, just stop.”

Leslie turned away with renewed disgust. Luckily, Chris and Ann had taken a break from dancing and were standing at a table a short distance away with their drinks. Leslie went to join them, surprised and annoyed that Ben abruptly jumped up to follow her.

Ignoring him, Leslie made polite chit-chat for a few moments about how wonderful the gays were, exclaimed over how great it was they had all become friends, and then started to subtly segue into some of her ideas for the parks budget.

Just as she was getting going, Ben’s hand landed on her upper arm, firmly grasping her there. “Excuse me. I just need to talk to Leslie over here for a second,” he said as he forcefully pulled her away from the table.

“What do you think you’re doing? Let go of me!” She squirmed angrily, trying to get away from him, but he had a pretty solid grip on her still.

“Look. I know what you’re doing. And I know you don’t want to do that.” His voice was calm, but he was looking straight into her eyes, really intensely, and his hand was still on her arm, and for some reason her heart had started beating really fast. He cocked an eyebrow. “Right?”

Leslie scoffed. “You don’t know anything. You don’t know me. What could you possibly know?”

He loosened his grip on her but left his hand there, a light but steady presence that wasn’t helping whatever thing that was going on in her chest. It must have something to do with the pink drinks they’d been serving her at the bar all night, on the house. What was in those?

“I think I know you … better than you realize,” Ben said, imploring her with his eyes in a way that made her flinch. “And I know you’re better than this. You’re just having a bad night, Leslie. Think this through.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She set her jaw stubbornly and glared at him.

His fingers shifted slightly against her arm, almost gently, and it made her skin tingle. Dammit, why wouldn’t he just let go of her?

“I think you do. Look.” He nodded back toward Chris and Ann, who were already engrossed in flirty-looking conversation again. “Chris is my friend … sort of. Ann is your friend, your good friend, it seems, and … she seems like a nice person. And they seem to really like each other. Do you really want to ruin that for them?”

“Of course not,” Leslie snapped. “I wasn’t going to ruin anything for them. I was just going to subtly, you know, make my case. It was going to be fine.”

He looked at her skeptically, and she hated that, how he always thought he knew better than her. “You were not being subtle.”

“Yes. I was. I was being very subtle.”

“No, Leslie, you are not that sneaky. Take my word for it. I could see your plan, written all over your face, the moment you agreed to go out after dinner.” He finally seemed to notice that his hand was still on her arm and abruptly let go of her. “Don’t do this.”

She had intended to move away as soon as he let go, but instead she found herself inexplicably leaning toward him. “Why do you care? What’s it to you?” Her voice came out much shriller than she intended. Yeah, those pink things were definitely hitting her now. “You’re like a … heartless numbers robot. I bet you don’t even have a heart in there. Just a calculator probably.”

She thumped him on the chest with her fist, and he jumped backward slightly, and deep inside her she knew he didn’t deserve this, but it had been one disappointment after another tonight, one disappointment after another this whole summer, and he was the one standing in front of her, being infuriatingly right again, foiling yet another one of her plans, and she couldn’t stop herself.

“Look at you. You don’t have a soul, you have a suitcase! You do all this damage, and then you just leave. You don’t care what you leave behind. You’re like a …. traveling soulless suitcase monster." She started to poke him in the chest with her pointer finger to punctuate her words. "Stop trying to tell other people to stop trying. Just because you stopped trying doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. We were fine before you got here, and we’ll be fine after you leave. So just … stop it. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, backing away from her, his hands up in the universal sign of surrender.

The look on his face kind of killed her in that moment. Yelling at him didn’t make her feel better. She felt worse. Dammit, why did he have to have feelings and a family and a really cute mouth?

She did not just think that last thing.

Whirling away from Ben, she made her way back over to Ann and Chris, who at some point must have been able to tear their eyes away from each other, because they were now looking at her with some concern.

“I’m fine. Ann, it’s been a really long night, I think I’m just going to head out. I’ll take a taxi.” Looking between the two of them, their pretty mouths both still gaping at her, she smiled, feeling her eyes start to tear up. “You two are going to have very beautiful children.”

Nodding at Chris, shooting a quick backward glance at Ben, Leslie made her way to the door.

And that was that.

No Nerd Boy.

No money for her department.

But tomorrow was another day.


	5. Chapter 5

_I’m sorry._

Ben stared at the words on his computer screen, contemplating hitting send.

The tiny sentence seemed woefully inadequate to cover the circumstances. But what else was there to say? If he offered some sort of explanation for apparently standing her up— _my car broke down, my grandfather died, I caught food poisoning from eating a rancid rutabaga_ —Pawnee Lover would just insist on rescheduling. He’d be right back where he started, sitting across from a woman who definitely didn’t want to be sitting across from him.

Unless …

Ben hit backspace, punching the button ten times in rapid succession with his index finger, and impulsively replaced the words with:

_It’s a long story. I’ll explain later._

It was a long story, and he would have a lot of explaining to do, if he ever had the chance. But it was also identical to the message he’d sent to his sister last night, the one that Leslie had seen on his phone, and she might recognize the phrasing. She might make the connection, figuring out that the guy she couldn’t stand and the guy who she seemed to sort of like were one and the same.

If he was going to give himself away, though, why hadn’t he done it last night? It would have been so easy, any number of times—when she asked him to prove he had read Eleanor Roosevelt’s biography, for example. What if he had looked her in the eye and recited from memory one of the quotes that had come to mean so much to them in their online repartee?

What if, for that matter, he had just come out and told her the truth?

When he closed his eyes, he could see her face before she stormed out of the bar, chin quivering with fury and blue eyes bigger and brighter than he’d ever seen them. She had wanted to meet Nerd Boy last night, but she definitely did not want to find out that Nerd Boy was him. It was clear that such a revelation would kill their pen pal relationship, whatever it was or might have been.

Maybe it would be kinder, ultimately, not to leave her wondering, but—

He couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Not yet.

For variety, this time he placed the cursor at the beginning of the line and held down the delete key, watching the letters get sucked into a depressing nothingness.

“Good morning, Ben!”

Chris burst into the office promptly at 8:30, startling Ben out of his funk.

“Morning,” Ben answered without looking up, feeling like he needed at least two more cups of coffee and a pair of dark sunglasses before facing the relentless cheerfulness of Chris Traeger today.

“I had simply a fantastic time last night, didn’t you?” Ben glanced up disbelievingly at him, but Chris didn’t seem to notice. “Ann Perkins is truly delightful. I ran two extra miles this morning just thinking of her. Do you think she likes me?”

“Do I think she _likes_ you?” Ben narrowed his eyes incredulously. He really wasn’t in the mood to talk about the romantic success that Chris had had last night, considering how his own evening had turned out. “Really couldn’t say. We’re not exactly close.”

“She left so quickly after Leslie did, I didn’t have a chance to ask her out for a second date. I’ll give her another call soon. She hasn’t picked up yet this morning. I’m so pumped this is working out! Remember what I told you? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, and—”

Ben winced. “Please don’t.” Then, feeling bad for how he was treating the guy who was now, apparently, his only friend in Pawnee, he mustered a weak smile. “Sorry, I just have a bit of a headache … from the music last night. I’m sure she’ll call back.”

Turning away from his partner, he refreshed his gmail inbox for the umpteenth time that morning, hoping for who knows what sort of message from Pawnee Lover.

From _Leslie_.

A new message appeared, and his heart leapt into his throat for a fraction of a second until he realized it was just from his sister, Kate.

_Why on earth would you tell your boss that it was my birthday? Three months early? You have a lot of explaining to do, nerd. Call me later._

Ben stared at the short message—or more accurately, stared at a particular word in the message that was suddenly striking him as suspicious.

Kate called him nerd. She called him that all the time, come to think of it—with the slightly annoying but mostly affectionate quality that an older sister can get away with. And she knew things, things that would—

No. She wouldn’t.

Would she?

\--

“I’m sorry.”

Leslie barely got the pair of words out, she was panting so hard by the time she got to Ann’s doorstep.

Ann was giving her that look, that who is this insane person and why did I ever let her into my life look. Or possibly she was just hungover? It was hard to tell.

“Leslie. What’s going on? Why are you out of breath?”

“I.” _Gasp._ “Ran over.” _Pant._ “Here on my lunch break.”

Ann raised her eyebrows and stepped aside, ushering Leslie into the house.

“Go sit down in the living room. I’ll bring you some water,” Ann commanded in that friendly-but-stern nurse voice she did so well.

The water was cold and eased the pounding in her head a bit. Leslie realized she must still be dehydrated from all those pink cocktails at The Bulge last night, and running all the way over here probably hadn’t helped.

“Where is your car?” Ann asked after giving Leslie a minute to recover. “I tried to go after you last night, but you were already gone.”

“At the bar, I think, maybe? Or did I leave it at JJ’s? It wasn’t in my driveway this morning, and it just seemed easier to walk to work than to go find it immediately. Maybe I should go find it. You know what, that’s a good idea, Ann, I should go find my car now. Thanks for the water!”

“Hold it.” Ann blocked her exit. “You just got here, and you clearly ran the entire way, so there must be a reason. What’s going on?”

Leslie sat back down, taking a deep breath. “Okay, you’re right. Just. Ann. Before I say anything … can you tell me, on a scale of one to one thousand, how angry you are at me?”

“What do you mean, how angry I am at you?”

“Just, approximately. So I know how much groveling I need to do. And how many I’m-so-sorry cookies I need to bake. And how much of a chance I have of ever making it up to you and deserving your friendship again.”

Ann sat down next to her on the couch, looking more concerned than anything, so Leslie guessed that meant … six dozen cookies? No, better make it twelve dozen just to be safe.

“Make what up to me? Leslie, I don’t know what’s going on. Why would I be mad at you?”

“Didn’t you get any of my messages?”

Ann shook her head, bewildered.

“Texts? I sent you like 27 texts today.”

Ann smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Leslie. I turned the ringer off after it woke me up at 6:30 this morning, and I guess I forgot to turn it back on.”

Leslie blinked. She had been bracing herself for an onslaught of indignation and fury and a lot of yelling and possibly some name calling. Having Ann sitting next to her, gently prodding her to tell her what was wrong, suddenly that seemed so much less plausible.

And somehow that made her feel worse.

“Ann, you beautiful trusting tamarin monkey. What happened is that I was almost a terrible friend to you last night. I was upset that my date didn’t show up, and I was trying to salvage the night, and you know how I’ve been trying so hard to get money for my department all summer.”

Ann nodded, so Leslie plunged full-speed ahead. “I thought that maybe, since it seemed like Chris liked you so much, that I might be able to take advantage of the fact that he obviously wanted to have sex with you. And you know, that he might even have been willing to increase your best friend’s department’s budget if he thought it would increase the chances that he’d get to have sex with you.”

She said it all really fast, on the off chance that Ann might miss some of the words, specifically the ones referring to what an awful friend she’d been.

“Oh.” Ann’s eyes widened and she shrank away from Leslie, slumping back into a couch cushion. “You were going to tell Chris that I would sleep with him, if he gave you money for your budget?”

Leslie cringed. That sounded so crass! “Not in those exact words, Ann. I was going to be very sneaky. And it’s not like I was going to force you to have sex with him. You probably would have wanted to anyway, right? Because you’re both so good looking, I assumed, so I thought I would just ...” Yikes. It really had been that awful of an idea. “But the point is, I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t, and I’m sorry I ever thought of it, and I just hope you can forgive me.”

Strangely, Ann looked more bemused than anything. “Leslie, if I got mad at you every time you had some crazy half-baked idea … at any rate, you didn’t do anything, so you made the right choice, right?”

Leslie tilted her head from side to side, one corner of her mouth turned up guiltily, as she debated whether to admit to Ann that it hadn’t exactly been her idea to abort the mission. Before she got there, recognition flashed across Ann’s beautiful face as she put the pieces of the evening together on her own. “That’s what you were fighting with Ben about?”

“Um … sort of.” Leslie had vague memories of yelling at Ben, accompanied by more vivid recollections of his face while she was yelling at him. “He did butt in where he wasn’t wanted and ruined yet another one of my plans.”

“A plan that you were just apologizing to me for even thinking about,” Ann pointed out.

“He shouldn’t have even been there. And he was being Ben. And I was upset about Nerd Boy not showing up, which I guess wasn’t his fault, but Ben was there. And I had to sit next to him.”

Ann frowned doubtfully at Leslie, so she added quickly, “And he misquoted Eleanor Roosevelt! Really … completely … butchered it. Twisted her whole meaning into something … very unlike Eleanor. It was appalling.”

Not to mention he had blocked her every attempt at saving her department this summer, and done so without a trace of empathy or humanity. And he had yelled at her about vegetables!

He had deserved the yelling, right? Her anger at him was so mixed up with her disappointment and frustration over everything that was going wrong this summer, she didn’t even know anymore.

“Anyway. That’s not important. What’s important is that I’m sorry. Friends are more important than work, or boys, or waffles even, usually, sometimes, waffles are very important actually. But friendship is too, and I shouldn’t have forgotten that. I’m sorry I forgot that.”

“It’s okay, Leslie.” Ann turned toward her again. “Of course I’m glad you didn’t do that. But I know you were upset last night, and you know, I probably shouldn’t have expected you to come out with us in the first place after what happened.”

Leslie exhaled dramatically in relief. “Really? You’re not upset? You are the best, Ann. I love you so much, and I will never try to use your beauty for personal gain again. Pinkie swear, I promise.”

Ann laughed and offered up her pinkie. “Okay. Sounds good. And in return, I will never make you double date with me and Chris and Ben again.”

Leslie ignored the mention of Ben’s name, which made her weirdly uncomfortable. “So what is the scoop with Chris? It seemed like you really hit it off.”

Ann shifted uncomfortably. “Ah … well … we did, I guess. The problem is, he seems to think we really hit it off.”

“What do you mean?”

“Last night, after you left, he got all serious, saying things about how I was the most amazing woman he had ever met, and how it was the best first date he’d been on in his life … and you had just said that thing about how we’d have beautiful children…”

“I said what?”

“Yeah, you seemed a little buzzed, I know you didn’t mean anything. But I just freaked out after that, and I left. He seems like he wants something really serious already, and we’ve just been out once. It wasn’t even supposed to be a date.”

Leslie was suddenly really glad she hadn’t pushed anything last night.

“Have you heard from him?”

“He’s the one who called at 6:30. Who calls that early?”

“I call that early,” Leslie admitted sheepishly.

“Yeah, exactly. Close friends. A boyfriend maybe, if he knows you’re going to be up. Not some guy you hung out with once … and made out with accidentally a few months ago.”

“Are you going to call him back?

Ann sighed. “I don’t know yet. He is really hot, and I liked him. A lot, maybe. And god, is he hot. I just don’t want to toy with his feelings when I’m not sure, you know? I need to think it through first.”

Leslie patted Ann on the knee. She was a really good person, trying to do the right thing in the face of that kind of hotness. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks. But what about you, did you hear anything from your mystery date?”

“No. Not a word yet. I don’t know. Maybe he’s still … detained, wherever he was detained. Will you check for him at the hospital?”

Ann narrowed her eyes skeptically. “Check for … a guy named Nerd Boy?”

“No. You’re right. That would be silly. Of course not. Um … yeah, anyway, he’ll probably write soon. I’m sure he will. I should go! Have to get back to the office. Crap, I didn’t eat anything. Ann, do you have any fruit?” Leslie wandered into Ann’s kitchen. “I’m just going to take this apple for the road, if that’s okay.”

Ann followed her in and grabbed her car keys. “You can have the apple if you let me drive you. We’re going to go find your car.”

\--

The moment Ben was inside his motel room that evening, he dialed his sister’s number. Kate picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, Ben, I was just sending you an email. Nathan built you this block tower, and I took a picture. He’s really proud of it. Wanted to show his Uncle Ben right away.”

“Great.” Ordinarily that would be the sort of thing Ben would have taken an interest in, and he would have asked her to put Nathan on the phone while he looked at the picture. But he had something kind of urgent he wanted to ask her about first. “Should we talk about the fact that you made a fake online dating profile for me?”

The line went silent for a moment, confirming what Ben had finally guessed.

“Oh, um … I don’t know. Should we?”

“Kate.”

“Wow. I kind of totally forgot about that. That’s still out there, huh?”

“Seriously, Kate? Yes, it’s still out there.”

“I’m sorry. I am, I really am.” She sounded sincere, at least. “I had the best intentions, I swear. I just thought it would be good for you to meet someone, and I know Chris tries, but somehow I just don’t see him being very good at picking out women for you. I was trying to help.”

Ben let out a slow sigh, some of the anger and frustration starting to drain out of him. It was hard to stay mad at her. And yet—

“Nerd Boy, Kate? You thought a lot of women were going to be interested in someone with the user name Nerd Boy?”

“… oh.” He could practically hear her wince, and her normally forceful voice turned small. “Well, the book club ladies were here. We were drinking wine, a lot of wine I guess, and … Cindy asked about you.”

“Cindy Eckhart?” Oh god. This just kept getting worse and worse.

“Yeah, well, it’s Cindy Nelson now, but you know we still hang out. She and some of the girls were looking at the pictures of you playing with Nathan from last Christmas, and wondering why no one had snatched you up yet. Everyone seemed pretty unanimous that you were a catch.”

“What?” Seriously, now Cindy thought he was a catch?

“Oh, yeah. Good head of hair, good with kids, that equals ‘catch’ around here. You know, Cindy’s husband is bald and works long hours. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy but—”

“Hold it, hold it. Let me get this straight. You and your book club friends got drunk and decided to meddle in my personal life. Shouldn’t you have been, I don’t know, discussing a book?”

“Yeah, right, Ben, because that’s what book clubs do. Anyway, no, nobody else had anything to do with the dating profile. It just got me thinking, and after they left—I don’t know, maybe I had too much wine that night. Hence the Nerd Boy thing, I guess. But I had the best intentions, really. It’s been a while since you’ve dated anyone, hasn’t it?”

“Right,” Ben said quietly. He stopped pacing around the room and sank down on the edge of the motel bed, pulling absently at some loose threads on the hideous coverlet.

“Wait,” Kate said after a moment. “How did you even find out? You didn’t get a response, did you?”

Ben didn’t say anything, but apparently that was enough of a confirmation.

“Oh my god. Someone responded! Someone has the hots for Nerd Boy. Ben, you have to marry this woman!”

“I have to … what?”

“Who else is going to have the hots for Nerd Boy?” she teased. “Be honest with yourself. You know it’s true.”

“Thank you. That’s very helpful. Jesus, Katie.”

“Seriously, though, you are a great catch, and not just because of your hair, obviously. You deserve someone nice. You deserve to be happy.”

“Well … thanks,” he managed with slightly less sarcasm.

“So … what is she like? Tell me everything. Please?”

“Um … well, she’s …” Ben toyed with the idea of blowing his sister off, because he was still pretty annoyed with her, but he was so flustered and confused over the whole situation, he kind of wanted her opinion. “The thing is, it turns out we know each other already. We work together. She really likes … Nerd Boy, or at least I think she did … but she really hates Ben Wyatt.”

“Um. You know you’re the same person, right?”

Ben glared ineffectually in the vague direction of Minnesota. “She doesn’t know that, though. We haven’t met in person yet. I mean, except for that we have.”

Kate started giggling. “Your life sounds like some kind of bad romantic comedy.”

Ben couldn’t help but laugh too, mirthlessly recognizing the absurdity of the situation. “Doesn’t it? God. It’s just … that’s not how it works in real life. People who don’t get along don’t just magically change their minds and live happily after. That doesn’t happen.”

“Maybe it could,” Kate mused.

For a moment, Ben imagined a world in which Leslie was anxiously waiting for her date at a café and was happy to see him come through the door. It was absurd.

“I don’t know, Kate.” He sighed, trying to think of a simple way to explain the predicament he’d gotten himself into. “Look. We were supposed to meet last night, and she thinks I stood her up, even though I was there, she didn’t know it was me, and now I’m trying to figure out how to explain that. She’s going to want to reschedule, but I can’t do that, because she’s furious at me for something I did last night. In the meantime, she’s waiting for Nerd Boy to write to her, and—”

“What? No, never mind, stop,” Kate cut him off mid-sentence. And he couldn’t blame her, he knew how ridiculous it all sounded. “Okay, you know what, I have an idea. Forget the whole hokey thing where you’re Ashton Kutcher and she’s Kate Hudson and you’re trapped in this weird she loves me but she hates me but she doesn’t know I’m the same person as myself plot. Because that shit’s ridiculous.”

“Okay …” Ben said tentatively, blanching at her casting choices for his life.

“Because it’s a lot simpler than that, right?”

“No, actually, I’m pretty sure it’s that fucked up, no matter how you look at it.”

“I get that, believe me. But tell me this. You have feelings for a woman—a real flesh and blood woman who you’ve spent time with, in person, not some kind of, I don’t know, avatar?”

“People don’t have feelings for avatars, Kate. An avatar is just a graphical representation of a—”

“Answer the question, nerd.”

“I don’t know. I never really, I mean, I think, if the situation were, if she weren’t so … and if I could just … ” Ben trailed off, considering that he might have actual feelings for Leslie, not just in the sense that she was Pawnee Lover, but Leslie, the yellow-haired parks director who stomped around and made trouble and wrinkled her nose at him and … _never stopped trying_.

And that the reason he hadn’t admitted this before was, one, because he had feelings for another woman, or at least for someone he had thought was another woman, and two … “It doesn’t matter. She’s clearly not interested.”

He could practically hear Kate rolling her eyes. “And why do you think that is?”

“Oh, I don’t know! Because I shut her government down. Because I slashed her department’s budget. You know, little things, like that.”

“I find it hard to believe you’d fall for someone who wasn’t smart enough to see you were just doing your job,” she pointed out.

Ben had to admit she had a point. It was one of the most frustrating things about Leslie—she was clearly smart enough to understand the numbers on the spreadsheets. So why did she still hold him so responsible?

“Does she hate Chris too?” Kate pressed.

“Of course not. Chris is Chris.”

“So she loves Chris?”

“No. God, that’s just … no. She’s just polite to him. What are you saying—I need to be more like Chris?” Nothing would ever get done if he did that.

“You just want her to be polite to you?” Kate asked skeptically. “Look, just be yourself, Ben, get off your computer and be Nerd Boy or whoever in real life. Talk to her. You now, try something.”

Like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“You sound just like Chris.”

“Yeah, well, Chris isn’t all bad. The flowers he sent me for my fake birthday are gorgeous. Look, I’m sorry I created the dumb profile. No, you know what, I’m not sorry. Because if this works out … you know I just want you to be happy.”

“Thanks, Kate. I mean, thanks a lot,” he mustered as much sarcasm as possible for those three syllables, because this stunt deserved it, but then let his voice drop back to quiet sincerity. “But thanks.”

After they hung up, Ben set his laptop to chime if he got a message and collapsed back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe his sister had been right that he needed to think about how to deal with Leslie in person. It reminded him of something Leslie had said last night when she caught him typing away on his phone—something about people who hide in their electronics. Is that what he was doing?

He laid back and squeezed his eyes shut, his mind a blur of yellow curls, color-coded idea binders, and multi-media presentations set to Hollywood soundtracks. He let his mind drift indulgently to a handful of times when Leslie hadn’t looked at him like he was armed with an actual machete—when he had taken her out for a beer his second day in town and thought they were on the same page, before everything went inexplicably wrong again. That one morning when she’d been waiting for him on the steps outside City Hall ready to show him the extra funds she thought she’d found. A few stray moments last night at the bar when he thought he was getting somewhere with her finally, before she’d turned on him again.

The thing was, whenever he talked to Leslie in person, it was as the guy who had shut down her government and cut her budget down to the bare bones. It hadn’t been his choice, but for whatever reason, he was the one she seemed to blame.

And he wasn’t sure how they were ever going to get past that.

\--

After her morning shower, Leslie shuffled into the kitchen, started a pot of coffee, and grabbed a banana for breakfast. Then she frowned at the vase in the middle of her kitchen table.

An unidentified leafy green vegetable protruded from it, its leaves brown and droopy, a remnant of her run-in with Ben at the grocery store a few weeks ago. She hadn’t known what to do with it, and it’s not like she was going to eat it—yech—but whatever it was had thick curly leaves that looked kind of pretty, so sticking it there had seemed like a valid choice at the time.

It seemed like more of a stinky choice now. Wrinkling her nose, Leslie picked up the vase and dumped it out her back door.

Two down, one to go, since the artichoke had gone south last week. For a little while, it had made a pretty cute hedgehog, with raisins for eyes and a cherry stem mouth.

Now all that was left was the beets, which she’d thrown in her crisper drawer because they were too ugly to do anything else with. She opened her refrigerator and poked around cautiously at the dirty bulbous-looking things, considering throwing those out too—it’s not like she was going to cook them, or pickle them, or whatever disgusting thing it is one does with beets.

But getting rid of them felt too much like admitting defeat. Too much like admitting that Ben had been right about her that day she’d impulsively thrown them into her cart after he’d yelled at her about being irresponsible.

The Emergency Budgetary Task Force was no longer in session, and it was only two weeks until the City Council would meet to vote on the auditors’ recommendations, but this was not over. Not by a long shot.

Since the task force wasn’t meeting, Leslie wasn’t required to be at City Hall, but since she had her essential badge she technically wasn’t barred either, so she dressed in some jeans and a smart, lightweight blazer and drove to work.

After a few hours of fruitless brainstorming in her office, she felt like she needed a change of scenery. Grabbing a fresh notepad and one of her idea binders, she set off for the bench by the wildflower mural on the second floor. Sitting there always seemed to make her feel better—who wouldn’t be inspired sitting in front of all that thriving beauty?

She took the stairs two at time, in a hurry to be inspired, and turned the corner, only to stop short.

Ben Wyatt was in her spot.

Of course he was. He was the last person she wanted to see, and he was everywhere she went lately, like this barrier that someone kept picking up and sticking in front of anything she wanted.

He looked up from whatever he was writing in his padfolio, and his eyes widened slightly at her. He appeared to stop breathing.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted, her hand unconsciously drifting up to her arm, where he’d held onto her two nights ago. She felt herself flushing slightly at the memory.

“Do you think, maybe, we could come up with a new way to greet each other?”

“Sorry.” She bit back the urge to apologize to him for more, because she hadn’t made up her mind yet about that, but tried to lower her voice to a slightly more civil level. “I like this spot. You’re in my spot. I really need this spot today. Why are you here anyway?”

He nodded slightly toward the other end of the hall. “The auditors’ office is over there, remember? Chris is in there … being Chris, you know. Sometimes I just need to get away for a few minutes. And I like the mural right here.”

Leslie looked disbelievingly at the wall of beautiful yellow wildflowers and back at Ben, who was still in her spot.

“Um …” He scooted over to one side. “It’s a big enough bench. Do you want to sit down?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. No, she didn’t want to sit next to him. He was distracting, with his rolled-up sleeves and his ugly shirt and his inflexible views on government spending. And she didn’t need to be distracted right now.

But he looked warily hopeful in that way he had over waffles and drinks, when he’d seemed almost like a human being, and she did feel bad for yelling at him that night. Of all the things that were Ben’s fault this summer, the fact that her date hadn’t shown up was not one of them. And he had saved her from doing something she would have regretted, even if she’d never admit that to him.

Perching herself on the far opposite end, Leslie opened her binder and tried to ignore that he was there, but she could feel him glancing at her every few seconds. Was he trying to unnerve her so that she would leave? Well, fat chance that was happening. This was her bench.

“Working?” he asked finally.

“Yes, I’m working on a dozen super-awesome ideas that are going to blow you away just as soon as I finalize some of the details,” she snapped at him. “Better keep some time open next week, because you and I are going to have some marathon meetings in which I convince you to throw out your recommendations and put these into action.” She tapped her binder for emphasis.

He raised his eyebrows at her, and she couldn’t tell if he believed her bluff. She would have a dozen super-awesome ideas by then; she just didn’t know what they were yet.

Trying to keep up appearances, she started to doodle some important-looking idea words on her notebook but could feel him watching her.

“What?”

“Um … nothing. Just, can I ask you something?”

He looked weirdly nervous, and it was making her feel weirdly nervous. “Sure. Yep. Whatever. Ask away. What is it?”

He looked away from her for a moment, furrowing his brow and resting his forehead on his fist. His sleeves were rolled up, and she noticed the way his forearm tensed attractively, and then wanted to smack herself for noticing something like that.

“Did you know that Chris outranks me?” he asked, finally turning back to her.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting him to ask, but it wasn’t that.

“Yeah, sure, I guess, I think I knew that. Or I assumed. So?”

“I don’t know. It’s just … you’ve spent a lot of time this summer trying to convince me to funnel more funds to your department. The meetings, the emails, that presentation, which I felt like was directed at me.”

“I care about my department. Of course I’m going to put up a fight.”

“But Chris outranks me. He technically can overrule me. I haven’t seen you try to convince him. And now these meetings you want to schedule, I was just wondering … why meet with me, specifically? It’s almost like … I don’t know, like you care about … or, that you’re maybe trying to …”

“Hold it,” Leslie interrupted him. “You might recall, I did try to talk to Chris about the parks budget, at The Bulge. And you wouldn’t let me!”

Ben rolled his eyes. “That was different, that wasn’t a business meeting—that was, that was a date. Your friend was on a date with him. Anyway, I was just curious—”

“Oh come on,” Leslie interrupted him. “It’s not like I was going to sell her into sex slavery to fertilize the soccer fields!”

He laughed a little at that, then cleared his throat self-consciously, and she glared at him. “I’m not a bad person, Ben! I was upset. It was a really crappy night, and it’s been a really crappy summer, and I wasn’t myself. I’m not always like this.”

“I … I know,” he said quietly, looking a little taken aback by her outburst. “That's what I thought.”

Leslie closed her mouth, biting back a retort she had ready to fire back at him. She hadn’t expected not to need it, and she didn’t know what to do with that. She didn’t even know why she was trying to explain herself to him—what did it matter what he thought of her?

He should be explaining himself, anyway. If Ben and Chris hadn’t crashed, she and Ann could have had a girls’ night, and none of the rest of it would have happened.

“Why were you there anyway?” she asked him, realizing that had never really been adequately answered.

“What?” Ben looked more alarmed than she would have expected by this line of questioning, and she pressed forward.

“You and Chris, you just happened to be at JJ’s to see me get stood up. Why were you there?”

Ben swallowed audibly. “Um, well … Chris was just jogging past, and he saw Ann, out on the sidewalk … and I … was, ah, I was there because …”

Leslie practically gasped, as this vague thought that had been niggling at the edges of her mind pushed to the surface. “Chris just happened to show up? You didn’t have plans to meet him there?”

“No, I didn’t know he was going to be there, I was just, um …”

Crap on a crudité. Chris had just happened to be at the restaurant that night, at the same time Nerd Boy was supposed to meet her. He traveled for business. And he’d been detained … by a beautiful brunette who he happened to run into just outside the restaurant! And now he was falling in love with Ann, as men tended to do with Ann.

And that was why Leslie hadn’t heard from him!

“Maybe I will go talk to Chris! Chris and I have a lot of things to say to each other, I think!”

“Wait, what are you doing? That’s not what I—”

Leslie didn’t hear the rest of what Ben was saying because she was already speedwalking down the hallway. Furious, she burst into the auditors’ office.

“Leslie Knope! What a pleasant surprise!” Chris greeted her cheerfully, as if they were nothing more than temporary coworkers.

“Is it now?” Chris looked at her strangely, and Leslie tried to keep her voice calm, because she didn’t know for sure yet if she was right. “Chris. Do you happen to know any Eleanor Roosevelt quotes?”

“Of course. I know many Eleanor Roosevelt quotes. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. Should I go on?”

Leslie’s mouth went dry and her stomach turned over. She took a step backward. “What biographies have you read?”

Chris looked increasingly confused. “Biographies?” Then he pulled a tome off his bookshelf: Quote Junkie: Inspirational Quotes Mega Edition.

Oh.

She let out a breath and started to relax.

“No. Never mind. I was thinking of something else. Carry on. I have to go.”

What had she been thinking? Of course Chris Traeger couldn’t be Nerd Boy. Everything about that was wrong.

And it was ridiculous to think that someone she met online could possibly be someone that she already knew in real life. What would be chances of that happening?

“Leslie,” Chris called after her as she was almost through the door, and she ducked her head back into the office. “I had a wonderful time the other night with your friend, the exquisite and delightful Ann Perkins. Do you think she would be interested in going out with me again? I haven’t heard from her since then.”

Leslie was about to tell him some of what Ann had shared with her, but she bit her tongue. She had learned her lesson about meddling with Ann’s love life.

“No idea. We haven’t talked about it. She hasn’t mentioned you.”

“Not at all?”

Chris looked crestfallen, but Leslie continued to shake her head, feigning ignorance on the matter. “Nope. Not a word. Sorry.”

“Okay. Thanks anyway.”

Leslie spun through the door and almost ran straight into Ben, who was once again in her way. When she stopped short and threw up her hands, they collided with his chest, and he put a steadying hand on her elbow. For a split second, their eyes met, and she thought she recognized him—or rather, recognized him as someone other than him, which made no sense.

“Watch where you’re going,” she mumbled, as she jerked away and zagged around him to hurry away down the hall.

\--

Ben watched the blur of Leslie’s yellow curls and blazer disappearing rapidly down the hallway, feeling as shell-shocked as he usually seemed to feel after their encounters.

For a terrifying moment back there on the bench by the mural, he’d thought she’d actually put all the pieces together and come up with the truth, or at least suspected it. And why not? He supposed he’d been pretty obvious approaching her table in the café that night. The fact she hadn’t immediately figured it out probably spoke to how much she didn’t want Nerd Boy to turn out to be him.

But seriously, to think even for a moment those letters had been written to her by Chris? Something about that smacked him in the gut. Not that Chris wasn’t a good guy, but why would her mind go there—why not to the other auditor who just happened to show up at the café at the right time? Even when she was considering the unlikely, Ben somehow didn’t qualify.

As he settled in back at his desk to try to work, he noticed that Chris now had two different relaxation soundtracks playing simultaneously. Ben winced at the harp music fighting to be heard over the sounds of the rainforest.

He did his best to tune it out as he usually would, but when Chris started throwing a relaxation ball against the wall, thuds resounding between twangy harp notes and what sounded like chimp noises, he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Chris. Is something wrong?”

“Ben, I’m so glad you asked. I am simply distraught over this Ann Perkins situation.”

“There’s a situation?” He really didn’t want to know. Not at the moment, at least, when he was having his own crisis of confidence.

“I want to ask her out again, but she hasn’t called me back. Leslie said she hasn’t mentioned me. And I thought we had such a lovely time on Tuesday night. It seemed like she really liked me. Didn’t you think it seemed like she liked me?”

Chris’s ability to read people could be off sometimes, but actually, Ben had to agree this time. It had seemed like they were hitting it off; it’s what had made it so depressing to watch, considering Ben’s own situation, which could be called the exact opposite of hitting it off.

“Well, look. It’s been less than 48 hours. Give it time, right? I’m sure she’ll call.”

Chris lit up like Ben had given him a signed and notarized guarantee.

“You think so? I’m sure you are right. Good things come to those who wait. I just cannot believe I have not heard from her, especially after the flowers I sent.”

“You sent her flowers?”

“Yes. I was at the flower store placing a belated order for your sister’s birthday, so I picked up a bouquet and dropped it on her doorstep while out for my morning run. Maybe I should call her again.”

Ben winced at the thought of what the note on those flowers might have said. Chris generally seemed to date two categories of women: ones who ate up his flowery words and ended up boring him, and ones who might hold his interest if he didn’t scare them off by coming on too strong early on. He suspected Ann might fall in the latter group.

“No, I wouldn’t … don’t do anything else, okay? She knows where you stand, so, I think the ball’s in her court.”

Chris frowned. “I suppose you’re right. It’s just too bad, because I was hoping we could all go out again together. That was fun, wasn’t it?”

Ben gaped it him. Sometimes when Chris was caught up in something, it was like he got tunnel vision.

“Maybe we could still arrange something,” Chris continued hopefully. “If you could get Leslie Knope to go somewhere with you, and make sure she brings the lovely Ann Perkins, I could bump into the three of you, and it would be just like Tuesday night. Where do you think we should go? Pawnee has a good zoo, I hear. Would Leslie want to show you the zoo?”

“No. No, no, no.” For a moment, Ben couldn’t seem to get his mouth past the word no. “No. That’s not, no.”

“Why not?”

“Okay, for one thing, if you just show up again, Ann will think you are stalking her. And for another thing …” _Leslie would never agree to go somewhere with me, even though unbeknownst to her I am her secret online love interest. Good lord._ “No, I’m fairly certain, Leslie does not want to show me the zoo.”

“I don’t understand why not. Leslie’s a wonderful tour guide. She’s the most knowledgeable local historian I’ve met here, and she would be more than willing to share her expertise with an interested party. All you have to do is show an interest, Ben.”

Wait, did Chris know something? Ben brushed the idea aside as absurd; this was Chris, for god’s sake. Tunnel vision.

“At any rate, the point is, Chris, you should wait for Ann to make the next move.”

Chris smiled resignedly. “Waiting it is then.” He put the stress ball in a drawer and turned off the harp music.

Ben tried to focus on the spreadsheet that was in front of him. Distractedly, he flipped over to a browser to check his email, out of habit more than any expectation of hearing from his online pen pal. Not since he still hadn’t written to her to explain his supposed absence.

But there it was. He had a message from Pawnee Lover.

With equal parts dread and hope, he clicked to open it.

_Where are you? I’ve tried to be patient, but just now I almost made a complete fool of myself thinking someone I work with might be my Nerd Boy. It was an insane idea—he is nothing like you, and I would have been really disappointed if it had turned out to be true. Not to mention that it would have been a disaster, because my best friend is into him. Anyway, obviously he’s not, because you’re you, and you’re … I don’t really know, honestly, because you didn’t show up. Were you abducted by Eagletonians? Stuck in an elevator? Was it the raccoons? I warned you to stay away from the northern half of Harvey James Park after dark. I just hope you’re okay and that you’re current on all of your immunizations._

_More than anything, I just want to talk to you again. I need to come up with a dozen good ideas by next week, or at least one really exceptional idea, and I don’t have anything. Meanwhile I have these very judgmental beets sitting in my crisper drawer and no idea what to do with them. Oh, and also, this guy I think I kind of like stood me up on Tuesday and I haven’t heard from him since._

_But mostly I miss my friend. Are you still out there somewhere?_

_PL_

Ben couldn’t help smiling at the screen, so happy to hear from her again. And he was struck by how much he could hear Leslie’s voice in the words, loud and clear—had it been there all along?

Of course it had been.

So she didn’t have any ideas after all. He supposed he should feel smug about that, but he didn’t—there was something endearing about it, that she was still trying, albeit less successfully than she’d led him to believe. (And why did she seem to care how he saw her? He had the strange thought again that she might not like him, but she was far from indifferent.)

Reading the message again, ripe with palpable frustration, he felt that impulse he usually felt toward Pawnee Lover—to be there for her, to encourage her, to be on her side. He wanted to root for her.

But that was problematic, because of his job. He couldn’t exactly cheer her on as she worked all weekend to come up with ideas that, more likely than not, he was going to have to veto as soon as they reached his desk.

How many times this summer, he wondered, had he done that without even realizing what he was doing?

Ben started to scroll through all her old messages, skimming the paragraphs and matching up things she’d written to him to things that had happened in City Hall.

At the beginning, the thing she was planning, the “ray of sunlight”—that must have been the children’s concert, he realized. Something he’d written had inadvertently inspired her to do all that, in between his real-life self telling her no and showing up to shut it down.

He read on, and it was absurd the level their lives had become entwined this summer, a strange push and pull between their online and in-person interactions.

The work stuff she had always been stressing about—that Nerd Boy had kept encouraging her not to give up on—that was the city budget crisis, of course. He’d seriously been getting her hopes up online and shooting them down in real life, all summer long. No wonder she was so frustrated.

One message jumped out at him. It was written the same day she had given that absurd presentation to the Emergency Budgetary Task Force—a day her message to him had sounded so sad and discouraged, he’d wanted to reach into his computer and wrap his arms around her and tell her it was all going to be all right. And then go out and do whatever he could to make that true.

_There’s this person in my life right now who just … I can’t even explain it. It’s not just that we disagree. It’s like he doesn’t have any respect for me. He doesn’t even have any interest in hearing my side. And it makes me feel awful. And it makes me say awful things to him. And then I feel worse._

He remembered wanting to punch that person, or not punch, really; he wasn’t violent. But to hunt him down, to tell him how blind he must be not to see her for what she was, to make sure he knew he didn’t deserve her attention, that he was lucky to even be in the same room with her and a fool for not recognizing that.

And she’d been talking about him.

He’d been refusing to believe any of this had been his fault; he hadn’t gotten Pawnee into this situation, and he had no control over the numbers. But reading her words, he wondered … if maybe some of this, some of what she felt about it at least, if maybe that wasn’t at least partly his fault.

What had he said to her after the task force meeting to make her so upset? He’d been so angry at her, he remembered—angry because he’d felt like she’d directed her presentation at him, to make him look bad, to make his job harder. In retrospect, he thought, she probably had been talking to him—but to win him over. To tell him her side. And she was right, he hadn’t wanted to hear it.

Ben hit the reply button and paused with his fingers over the keys, torn. He so wanted to be Nerd Boy again, writing to Pawnee Lover, offering friendship and encouragement to his anonymous pen pal. The problem was that now he was Ben, writing to Leslie, under a pretense.

He experienced a wave of annoyance all over again at Kate, for getting him into this mess. But in the next moment, he remembered something else she’d said, something about how he should let himself be Nerd Boy … in real life.

He started to type.

I’m still here, trying desperately to try to think of a way to apologize to you. No luck yet, I’m sorry to say. I sincerely wish I had an explanation I could offer that would make up for the discomfort I caused you Tuesday night and since. But I promise you that I am missing you too, and that I hope to someday make it all up to you.

NB

PS: If it makes you feel any better, I have no idea what to do with beets either. Who eats beets?

Quickly, he hit send, before he had a chance to think through the all he wanted to make up to her, and the improbability of being able to do that.

But the prospect of helping her, of helping Pawnee, nagged at the edges of his thoughts for the rest of the day as he worked. He was far from convinced romance would be in the cards for them, no matter what he tried. But the possibility that he might leave Pawnee as something other than her sworn enemy—that he could at least avoid going out in any way that would quell the spirit of this relentless force for good—it was tempting to try.

What if he helped her brainstorm—if he had his own batch of ideas to bring to this meeting she was scheduling for Monday—would that win her over? It seemed unlikely—the last time he’d tried something like that had been Ice Town, and that had bankrupted his city. Not to mention that Pawnee was already practically bankrupt. He wasn’t sure he trusted himself to come up with any more big ideas.

He found himself wishing he had access to those binders of hers, so that he might see if he could tweak something into a cost-effective plan. But he didn’t want to get her hopes up if it wasn’t going to work out, so he couldn’t exactly ask to see them.

Suddenly Ben remembered he did have access to one of Leslie’s idea binders, sort of—the parks department’s Master Plan.

He dug it out of a box where the auditors had discarded all the budget plans that had been based on faulty data. On the cover, he noticed Leslie’s name appeared slightly larger than Ron’s—he was pretty sure this was her master plan, the things she had planned to do with her department if Pawnee’s City Council hadn’t screwed things up so badly. The bound document was at least three inches thick—if he could even give some tiny piece of her plan back to her, maybe she would accept it as an olive branch.

An hour later, he closed the book and rested his head in one hand, thoroughly discouraged. Most of the document consisted of plans to build a park on Lot 48—public hearing transcripts, estimates from playground vendors, information that would be needed for the environmental impact study, essays on the impact of parks on communities, and a lofty smattering of Jack London quotes. Riveting reading, but what could he possibly do with any of that?

He tried to put it out of his mind and get some work done, but as he was driving back to the motel that evening, he impulsively turned left where he would normally turn right. His Saturn rolled to a stop at the edge of the large empty expanse known as Lot 48. He got out of his car and leaned against it, looking out over the field that had apparently once been a pit.

The last time he had been here, it had been overflowing with children. Now the stage was gone, and it was just another empty lot—wide expanses of dirt with patches of scruffy-looking grass and weeds. It was a depressing sight compared to how he remembered it, and he imagined it was even more so for Leslie. It crossed his mind to wonder how this summer might have gone differently if only she’d known—

“Um … hello?”

The voice startled him, and he spun around, surprised to see a familiar dark-haired woman standing about six feet away, arms folded across her chest and eying him suspiciously. It was Leslie’s friend, Ann.

“Oh, hey, Ann,” Ben greeted her, and when she still looked confused, added, “It’s … it’s Ben Wyatt. From the sidewalk? And the …” He gestured vaguely to indicate the strange ways their paths had crossed this summer.

“I know who you are, Ben,” she said, looking half amused and half wary. “Why are you lurking across from my house?”

“Lurking? Across from your house?” He was confused for a moment before he recognized the ranch house across the street as the one that had served as a public restroom during the Freddy Spaghetti concert. “Oh. I didn’t realize that you lived here.”

She raised her eyebrows at him, clearly still demanding an explanation for his presence. Ben shook his head and kicked awkwardly at a clump of dirt, unsure of that himself.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, honestly. I was looking at Leslie’s old master plan today, trying to figure out if there was anything I could incorporate into our final recommendations, and the whole damned thing is about Lot 48, so somehow I ended up here.” He grimaced, not really directing his speech at Ann any more, just letting out his frustration. “I can’t build her a park. I couldn’t even get her a park bench without screwing over another department, and I can’t do that just because I–”

He trailed off, realizing how he was about to finish that sentence, and who he was talking to. When he looked back at Ann, she was giving him that look again—the one that made him feel like she’d picked up on more than he’d meant to give away, and he felt his ears grow hot as he waited for her to say something.

“Sorry I greeted you like a miscreant,” she said finally, with a twitch of a smile. “I thought Chris sent you to spy on me.” Now it was Ben’s turn to raise his eyebrows. Ann shook her head, as if clearing it. “It’s been a weird couple days.”

“Tell me about it.” Ben was about to excuse himself from this awkward conversation, but then he remembered something that Pawnee Lover had mentioned in her message to him—Ann was into Chris. And apparently also really creeped out by him? It struck him as too bad—she seemed nice and down to earth, and Ben liked the idea of someone like that for Chris.

“Um … weird how? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Oh let’s see … he calls at weird hours, he sent flowers, and I swear I keep catching glimpses of him jogging past my house. And now you show up. You can see how I might be alarmed.”

“Right.” Ben could imagine how Chris’s behavior would appear to someone who wasn’t used to it. “Well, I’m not here to gather intel. I’d be terrible at that. Worst wingman ever. If it makes you feel any better, he sent flowers to my sister this week too. For her birthday, even though it wasn’t really her birthday. It’s a long story. She’s married, so that wasn’t … anyway, he sends a lot of flowers.”

She raised her eyebrows skeptically. “And is there a reason he seems to be circling my house?”

Ben shrugged. “He runs a lot.”

Ann shook her head, looking unconvinced. “You didn’t see the message attached to the flowers.”

Ben knew his boss, and he could imagine the message that was attached to the flowers—probably something that overused words like “love” and “ever.” It was so like Chris, but also—an incomplete picture of the guy. If Ann genuinely didn’t care for him, that was one thing, but … he was pretty sure they liked each other. And it seemed unfair that a misconception was standing in the way of that.

“Look … it’s not really my business, and I don’t care if you go out with Chris—” He paused, in case she was going to tell him to butt out, but she didn’t. “I don’t want it to be because you have the wrong idea about him. The thing … the thing about Chris is … is that he’s just like that. If he wants to call, he calls. If he likes someone, he tells them. It’s not personal.”

Ann was squinting and shaking her head, and Ben suddenly regretted saying anything—as if he was someone in a position to give relationship advice.

“Not personal? I don’t understand,” she said.

“No, he likes you, that’s personal, of course it is,” Ben scrambled to undo any damage he might have done already. “But … he barely knows you, right? I can see how the flowers and the words and the … everything, would seem like too much too fast. But it’s not like that. He’s not naming your future children, I promise you.”

“That’s good. Because it kind of seemed like he was naming our children already.”

Ben chuckled, relieved that she seemed to be taking this the right way. “He can be intense, I know, but he’s not crazy. He can get a little carried away sometimes, but he’s a really good guy. I’ve known him a long time.”

Ann shrugged offhandedly, but her expression was hopeful, and Ben thought she might give Chris a second chance after all. Helping to bring that about gave him a vaguely warm feeling, which quickly morphed into something more like an ache.

“You’re nice,” Ann said suddenly, considering him. “I can’t see why Leslie hates you so much.”

The words were like a punch in the gut. It was information he knew, pretty much, but it was something else to hear out loud, from the mouth of Leslie’s best friend.

“She hates me?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

Ann’s face twisted like she wished she could take it back. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Hate’s a strong word. She’s a really passionate person, and … let’s just say she gets carried away sometimes too.”

Ben started rattling his car keys. “It’s okay, I get it. I’m the guy who took her park away.” He tossed one more weary glance over Lot 48 and started to move toward his car.

“Hey, Ben?” He paused with his hand on his car door but didn’t look up. “You know, with Leslie … it’s enough to want to build a park.”

Ben managed a small smile in her direction, even though he suspected it wasn’t going to be that easy. Of course he wanted to build a park, or reinstate the full slate of rec programs, or expand the community center hours. But the Leslie he knew valued actions and results over flowery words and intentions, right? He felt like he still needed something more concrete to offer her.

“Thanks, and um, good luck with …” Ben trailed off with a vague gesture, since he didn’t want to presume that Ann was going to take his advice regarding Chris.

She smiled back at him. “You too.”

As he drove away, it occurred to him to wonder what Leslie’s best friend might be wishing him luck on.

\--

“Okay, you have to update me fast, because Chris is going to be here any minute,” Ann said, as she and Leslie walked through the city hall courtyard to the table where they sometimes met for coffee before Ann had to start her shift. “What’s the news with … you know, the guy who … ?”

“Nerd Boy?” Leslie filled in helpfully.

“Yes, that one. Sorry, I still can’t bring myself to call him that. Can we give him a name? How about … Ben. Just to have something to call him, for now.”

“No!” Leslie blanched and narrowed her eyes at Ann. What was she playing at? “God, that’s a horrible name. We already know a Ben, and he’s terrible, facewise, and otherwise. Terrible, terrible name. Bad Ann.”

“Oh … right. That would probably be too confusing, two Bens. Jimmy, then. What’s the situation with Jimmy?”

Ann had her eyebrows raised slightly and was smiling pleasantly, looking completely innocent, and Leslie shook her head in disbelief.

“Jimmy,” she called Nerd Boy, playing along, although the name sounded all wrong to her and felt weird on her tongue, “wrote to me yesterday.”

“What did he say? Did he have a good excuse? Why wasn’t he there?”

“He, um—” Leslie bit her lip, trying to think of how to explain how a note that said so little could have meant so much to her. “He didn’t really give a reason, not specifically, no.”

“Well, did he at least apologize?”

“Not, well … I mean, his tone was very apologetic.” Leslie shrugged contentedly. “And he said he’d make it up to me.”

Ann looked far from convinced, though. “When? He’s leaving town at the end of summer, right?”

“I think so.” Leslie took a long drink of coffee and sighed. “Maybe we’ll meet, maybe we won’t, but we’ve had some great conversations, and I’m sure we’ll have more great conversations, and maybe that’s all we were meant to do. Or maybe I’ll run into him on the sidewalk after work and we’ll live happily ever after. I don’t know what’s going to happen, Ann, but I’m feeling very zen about it.”

“Did someone say _zen_?” Chris appeared, all smiles and shiny teeth, and sat down with them. “Ann Perkins, you are looking especially lovely today. And Leslie Knope, I am forever grateful to you that you are allowing me to intrude on your coffee break to share in the company of this wondrous woman.”

“I’m just glad you two were able to …” Leslie chose her words carefully, not wanting to appear to have any ulterior motives. “Let’s just say I’m happy if Ann’s happy.” And Ann did seem happy—she was practically glowing.

“I would say that’s something we have in common,” Chris said, beaming. “And I must say, it’s good seeing you looking happier as well.”

Leslie winced a little, realizing that Chris had seen her lose her cool more than once this week. “It’s been a tough week. But the government shutdown is almost over, right? So things are looking up.”

Slightly. Even after her department was reinstated, there would still be quite a few things to be unhappy about, with the bare-bones budget they’d be operating on.

“Yes, I know that’s been especially hard on you. Ann was just telling me last night about all the plans you had before we arrived. I’m truly sorry that we had to make so many cuts to your department.”

Leslie felt the usual pangs of regret, but she brushed them aside, wanting to keep any conversation about government funding clear of Chris and Ann’s fledgling romance. “If only we’d found our secret philanthropist, right?” she joked, trying to sound off-hand.

Chris squinted at her. “Secret philanthropist?”

What was going on? First, Ann couldn’t remember Ben was even a person after spending an entire evening with him, and now Chris had forgotten the single most inspiring event of the entire summer? Must be something in the Sweetums smog this week.

“The mysterious benefactor who swooped in to save the children’s concert and then selflessly disappeared from the public eye?” Leslie clarified.

“I remember it, Leslie,” Chris said. “I just thought you knew.”

“Knew what?” Leslie and Ann asked at the same time.

“Who made the trip to Eagleton to find Freddy Spaghetti at the last minute. There weren’t that many people on site that day who even knew the situation. And I just assumed, well, you two have spoken several times since then, right?”

Leslie’s heart fluttered in her chest. “I’ve spoken to him?”

Chris shifted uncomfortably. “It’s Ben.”

“Where?” Leslie’s head whipped around, as she tensed in anticipation of another encounter.

“No, Leslie. Ben is the one who paid Freddy Spaghetti.”

Leslie set down her coffee, opening and closing her mouth a few times, but no sound came out. She was speechless.

She looked toward Ann for emotional support, but bafflingly, Ann just tilted her head to one side and smiled. “Aww, I knew it. He has a soft spot.”

“Mean Ben does not—” Leslie started to protest. It just didn’t make any sense.

“You might have to stop calling him that, Leslie,” Ann chided gently, and Chris chuckled.

Leslie stared aghast at her best friend. When had she started taking Ben’s side?

And more importantly, when had Ben’s side started being so confusing?

“But … why … wha … why would he do that?” Leslie wondered out loud. “He tried to shut that concert down.”

“He didn’t tell me why,” Chris said. “I think he just wanted the kids to have their concert, like we all did.”

Leslie tried to picture Ben, with his dark sunglasses and his tan windbreaker and his frowny face, driving over to Eagleton to negotiate with a children’s singer.

“He’s really not that bad,” Ann said. “I was going to tell you, I talked to him yesterday, over by Lot 48, and he was nice. He actually encouraged me to give Chris another chance.”

“I’m so glad you finally came around,” Chris said. “The wait has been interminable.”

“It’s been three days,” Ann pointed out, even as she and Chris turned toward each other and started holding hands while staring gooily into each other’s eyes. It was nice and all that they were happy, but also kind of annoying because Leslie wanted them to focus. She needed to understand what was going on here.

“What was Ben doing at Lot 48?” Planning children’s concerts? Playing matchmaker? This was all so weird.

Ann looked doubtfully between Leslie and Chris, before returning her gaze to her friend. “I think you should talk to him, Leslie, I really do. I think you might have a lot to talk about.”

“Maybe I will,” Leslie agreed weakly.

Ann and Chris started to make plans for the weekend, as Leslie sipped distractedly at her coffee and grappled with all this new information.

This whole summer, she’d viewed Ben as the enemy—not because her city was bankrupt, but because he was bankrupt. Bankrupt of feelings.

And all this time, he’d been living this secret double life as someone she idealized—as someone kind and generous enough to save a children’s concert? This entire summer, she’d been holding onto the idea—a fantasy, really, a bit of wishful thinking—that Nerd Boy had been her secret hero of the summer kickoff.

But it had been Ben, of all people.

It was almost as if …

Viewed in some ways, it would seem like …

If she really made herself face the facts …

Oh, crap on a crab apple, and a rotten one at that.

She’d been _wrong_.

It was a deeply uncomfortable feeling.

\--

 

Late Friday evening, Ben was alone in his office combing through a spreadsheet showing a detailed breakdown of the police department’s expenditures, when suddenly a rubber-banded bunch of beets landed in front of him, damp bits of dirt smearing across some line-items in the middle.

He grimaced in distaste, but it wasn’t the first time unappetizing produce had been thrown at him in the course of his work, so he took a second to mark his place with a sharp yellow pencil before looking up to find their source.

Leslie was staring down at him, a look of determination on her face. Startled more by her appearance than by the moist pile of vegetables in front of him, Ben sucked in a breath. He wasn’t ready to see her; he had no plan. And even if he had a plan … the plan wouldn’t look like this.

“Yes, Leslie?” he inquired as levelly as he could.

“Those are beets,” she said. As if that explained everything.

Belatedly, he realized they were probably the beets, the ones he’d seen her throw into her grocery cart a few weeks ago, after he’d yelled at her about responsibility. The memory made him wince—the way her reaction to him had hurt, the way he’d lashed out at her unfairly. He’d been hoping to start over with her somehow, but instead their past arguments were being thrown right back in his face.

Literally, almost.

“… and? What are they doing on my desk?”

“I don’t know. Don’t you want them?”

Her voice was obviously distraught, but it was oddly lacking in hostility toward him, and he noticed that she looked nervous … vulnerable even.

He relaxed slightly—whatever this was, it didn’t seem to be an attack. He looked back down at the beets, his annoyance turning to bemusement as he tried to figure out what was going on here.

“A bouquet of freshly unearthed beets. And here I thought you didn’t like me,” he said dryly, raising a tentative eyebrow at her.

She threw up her hands, flustered. “I don’t know what to do with them. What do people do with beets? What _are_ beets? And you’re the one who likes vegetables. So I thought … I don’t know. I guess I just thought you would know what to do with them. Here, you don’t want them, I’ll take them back. I’ll throw them out.”

She reached for the beets, at the same time he covered them with his hand possessively, and their hands bumped, sending a little thrill up Ben’s arm.

Wait. Why was he trying to keep her from taking them back?

Pawnee Lover— _Leslie_ —had mentioned in her note that she didn’t know what to do with these ugly things. And this apparently was her asking him for help with that?

It was almost like some sort of weird peace offering. Some tiny acknowledgment that she didn’t have all the answers, and that he might have something of value to add to the conversation.

Or maybe they were just beets.

Either way, she had withdrawn her hand, and she was looking at him all weird, and it seemed like he was committed to beet ownership.

“Don’t throw them out,” he said, trying to sound casual, as if he wasn’t really invested in the outcome of this weird situation. “I’ll find something to do with them.”

He actually had no idea what to do with them. He didn’t even know how to tell if they had gone bad. Tentatively, he leaned down to take a sniff, but they basically just smelled like dirt.

He looked up to see her staring at him intently, like he was a space alien or something. He stopped smelling the vegetables, realizing how weird that must look, but she was the one who looked caught.

“Okay. Good then. Right,” she said, turning to go. She paused in the door, looking everywhere but at him. “Oh, um, by the way … I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“About … about your spreadsheet.” She lifted her eyes to meet his, looking oddly serious to be apologizing about a little smear of dirt, and he felt she was probably referencing more, but he wasn't about to ask.

“Oh. It’s okay. No permanent damage done. I mean, I’ll print out a new one. And anyway …” He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry too. I mean … you know, it’s really my fault you had these beets anyway.”

Her eyes widened at him like she hadn’t expected that acknowledgment from him, and she nodded. “Good night, Ben,” she said.

“Good night, Leslie.”

She disappeared into the darkened hallway, and he stared after her for a moment. There was so much more he wanted to say to her, so much more he wanted to be able to do than this absurd little task she’d trusted him with. He had no idea where this was coming from, but it seemed like a start.

Doubtfully, he looked down at his unexpected bounty. This was fine. This was going to be fine. Now, all he needed was a recipe.

And some cookware of some sort, although he had no idea what.

And possibly an actual kitchen, something more than the hotplate and microwave he had access to at Pawnee Super Suites.

And maybe … maybe some new beets, because he really wasn’t sure about the viability of these.

It was a ridiculous amount of trouble to go to make a vegetable no one really wanted to eat, he realized, but Leslie Knope had asked him to do something. And his heart fluttered at the possibility of being able to actually find a way to do it for her.


End file.
